Insights
In a recent interview, former Home Depot CEO Frank Blake was asked to name the single capability that would matter most for professionals in the next five years. His answer was one word: discernment, the ability to weigh competing information, read context, and make a judgment call when there is no algorithm to make it for you.
AI is a powerful tool, but if you're not careful, it can have a negative impact on your career or the careers of your employees… not to mention your cognitive health. Let’s talk about how to keep and develop your professional discernment while using AI at all levels - individual contributors, managers, and executives.
AI tools are becoming more capable, more integrated into daily work, and easier to lean on. However, AI is simultaneously fostering cognitive decline that researchers are only beginning to study. Wharton workforce researchers have mapped a four-stage pattern in how professionals relate to AI:
Once workers reach stage four - Dependency, they show significant mental decline in their ability to function without AI assistance, and most do not realize the deficit has happened. MIT research backs this up, saying workers who lean most heavily on AI tools show the lowest brain engagement and most declining cognitive performance over time.
This is not an argument against AI, only a word of caution about what happens when professionals stop exercising personal judgment to a tool that outsources independent thinking. Judgment, like any professional capacity, atrophies when you stop demanding it of yourself. The issue is not using AI. The issue is lazy independent thinking.
Professional discernment is the practice of applying your hard-earned objective judgment to complex situations and career choices. It requires emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the ability to look beneath the surface so you can make values-driven decisions, especially under pressure. Here are some examples:
AI tools can analyze data, generate options, and surface patterns faster than any human. What they cannot do is tell you this:
These evaluations require discernment, and like any professional skill, discernment weakens when you stop using it.
The philosophy I built after decades of working to improve the people function–My Career Is My Responsibility–is built on a premise: your development is your job. This applies to your skills and your judgment.
The professional who outsources their thinking to AI is taking a shortcut, but they are also making a choice, often unconsciously, to stop developing. Every time someone skips the work of forming their own read, pressure-testing a recommendation, or sitting with uncertainty long enough to understand it, they are trading discernment for convenience.
Career ownership has always meant doing the hard thinking yourself, staying in the discomfort of uncertainty instead of handing it off, and taking responsibility for your conclusions even when they turn out to be wrong. AI creates a new version of an old trap: waiting for something outside yourself to do the hard parts. The professionals who recognize this pattern and pushes back against it are the ones who will have something irreplaceable in a few years.
Discernment is not a personality trait you either have or you do not. It is a practice, and it looks different depending on where you sit.
→ For individuals and early-to-mid career professionals, discernment starts with a single habit: form your own opinion, don’t be dependent on what AI produces.
AI is a great jumping off point and idea generator, but be sure to run the analysis, draft the recommendation, ask the questions, make the call. Then use the tool to check your work. It’s very helpful when brainstorming, but take the time to review each piece of information it gives you as if you were a manager checking an employee's work. This is a great chance to practice the skills that will help you advance. Even just asking, “Is this good work?” helps you expand your discernment perspective.
→ For managers, discernment becomes acutely visible in how you run your team.
Ask people to pressure-test AI recommendations rather than present them. Build a norm where the critical thinking process is expected and visible, not just final answers. One of the most useful things a manager can do is make it safe for someone to say, "I think the model is wrong here, and here is why."
→ For executives and organizational leaders, discernment carries an additional responsibility: you set the conditions under which AI and your culture cohesively operate.
This means putting clear policy and governance around AI within your organization. What kinds of decisions require human judgment before action is taken? What information is too sensitive to run through external AI tools, even subscription based? What is the standard for using AI as a decision-support tool rather than allowing AI to become the decision itself? What checks and balances are in place? Don’t forget: information entered into AI tools does not disappear. What your team puts out there is out there, and executives who have not thought through company guardrails accept risks they cannot fully see. Setting and communicating expectations clearly, including the do's and the don'ts, is a leadership responsibility. It protects the organization, and it models for everyone else what responsible AI use actually looks like.Frank Blake put it plainly: with AI, discernment and human input are the “critical value-add.”
The professionals who will advance in the next decade are not the ones who use the most tools, but the ones who used them wisely, stayed sharp, and never stopped taking responsibility for their own thinking. Your career is your responsibility. That includes what happens to your judgment when no one is making you use it.
Sera Business Advisors is a management consulting firm specializing in business-first HR, founded in 2014 by CEO Meredith Jones. Sera fosters growth and strategic development through training programs, an extensive library of proprietary tools, and a deep understanding of business for emerging startups, middle market companies, and publicly traded companies. To learn more, seraadvisors.com or pick up Meredith's book, My Career is My Responsibility.