Discernment is an uncommon term, but it perfectly describes our decision-making process. As human beings, one of the most difficult aspects of decision-making is to remain objective about our assessment of the alternatives. To reach good outcomes, our thought processes must navigate through a minefield of emotions, conscious and unconscious biases, decision-making shortcuts and incomplete recollections of previous experiences.
At Sandene Strategies, we are aware of these decision-making obstacles and mitigate them with our discernment, which means:
Being able to properly assess complex situations with intellectual honesty and impartiality.
“We use our knowledge and experience to dig a little deeper, sift through details and recognize subtle differences between choices to enable wise decision-making.”
We also realize that situations arise when we have strong preferences. In those instances, we present alternatives and disclose our personal preference in favor of a certain decision pathway.
A real-world example of how this plays out is the evaluation of certain expensive (in our opinion) insurance products. There have been times when a person would like to pursue an insurance option that we don’t support. This misalignment doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, the proper course of action for the person is to engage with a different financial advisor who offers the option they’d like to pursue.
Through discernment, we support our most important core value: Maintaining our integrity.