Decision Making- How do we explain our decisions to others?

It can be very hard to explain the decisions we make to someone. What makes perfect sense to you may seem inexplicable to someone else. We all live different experiences and have different amounts of knowledge and skills. One of my biggest challenges is trying to explain my decisions in a way that the other person will understand. Ironically for someone who writes a lot, putting things into words isn’t something I find particularly easy. When I was first introduced to human factors I remember a huge light bulb coming on when I realised that “situation awareness” was the expression I’d been looking for to explain what it was I could see was missing in most of my students. Until I actually realised that, I had no way of explaining what the problem was, much less any way to help them. All I could tell them was that there was “something” missing.

I found myself struggling to explain something the other day about a decision I had made. There is a canyon/tunnel system in my local area that is fairly commonly dived by tech divers. I have dived it myself, and very quickly made the decision to never do it again. It was this decision that I was struggling to explain to my colleague. He couldn’t understand why an experienced and competent diver (as he sees me) shouldn’t do it, and therefore, why he also shouldn’t. It’s a very simple system, just one tunnel without any off shoots. There are a few areas where it is possible to exit through the ceiling into the blue water above. The water is always calm inside the tunnel, without any current or flow, and the visibility is normally very good, around 20m or so. It’s a fairly big tunnel, on average around 3m wide and probably 6m tall. The problem I have with it is the amount of silt inside. It is covered with the stuff, floor, walls and ceiling. There are also no lines, and people have removed lines that have previously been placed to “stop recreational divers going somewhere they shouldn’t” (it is within recreational depth limits). I am not a cave diver, I’ve never had any form of cave or cavern training. I explained this to my colleague. He pointed out I’m perfectly capable of laying lines and following them. Classic Dunning Kruger- it’s easy to believe you (or others) are better at something at which you have very limited knowledge as it appears to be easy. I explained that while there is a chance I may be ok at laying lines I’ve never been tested at things like lost line drills, and therefore wouldn’t want to risk it. He countered that by saying my finning was good and I wouldn’t disturb any of the silt. We had spoken enough in the past about fail safes, but I could see that he couldn’t understand my argument about being able to find a line in a silted environment when he really thought I would never kick up the silt enough for that to be a problem.

One of the difficulties with explaining decisions to people is that they don’t know what you know, and you don’t know what they do (or don’t) know. It’s easy to make assumptions and yet we have to make some assumptions about knowledge otherwise we end up patronising people. This is why sometimes knowledge doesn’t get passed on. In my conversation I hadn’t realised that my colleague wasn’t aware that there had been several deaths and at least one close call in that system. The close call was a friend of mine, someone I looked up to as being a very good diver. He and a buddy had managed to silt out the tunnel, resulting in him having to take off his equipment in order to squeeze out of a tiny hole in the ceiling, and then exit the water on his buddy’s long hose.

After this conversation my colleague and I went for a dive. He was practising his skills for an upcoming assessment and I was watching. This meant I spent pretty much the entire dive just hovering in one spot, barely moving. After an hour or so we turned to leave and at that point I got the worst cramp I have ever had. As I turned to signal there was a problem I realised I had leant over and was starting to roll onto my back. There was nothing I could do, I couldn’t move my legs at all, so I had to let myself roll while frantically signalling to my buddy what the problem was. Luckily we were very shallow, with the sandy bottom just below us, so I landed on the floor and he helped stretch my cramp out. When we surfaced I started laughing. He asked what was so funny (considering how much pain I’d been in just a few moments before) and I asked if he thought I was such a good diver now. He looked confused until he realised I was thinking about the canyon system. I asked what would happen if someone got a cramp inside it. That was then he seemed to finally understand my decision.

Sharing a mental model is incredibly important for a team. If someone understands what knowledge or information you possess or what your expectations are then it will help them to know why you are making the choices you’re making. This information can only be shared by good communication. A comprehensive briefing helps with this. If buddy teams know each other well it makes life a lot easier, as you know what your buddy is likely to do. A good debrief at the end of a dive helps to build on the shared mental model by explaining your decisions, allowing your buddy to understand more.

Jenny is a full-time technical diving instructor and safety diver. Prior to diving, she worked in outdoor education for 10 years teaching rock climbing, white water kayaking and canoeing, sailing, skiing, caving and cycling, among other sports. Her interest in team development started with outdoor education, using it as a tool to help people learn more about communication, planning and teamwork.

Since 2009 she has lived in Dahab, Egypt teaching SCUBA diving. She is now a technical instructor trainer for TDI, advanced trimix instructor, advanced mixed gas CCR diver and helitrox CCR instructor.

Jenny has supported a number of deep dives as part of H2O divers dive team and works as a dive supervisor and safety diver in the media industry.

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