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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making with AI

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making with AI

$995.00 Sale

2027 Course Schedule

  • Spring 2027: Live virtual sessions via Zoom
  • August 3, 2027: One day in-person in Indianapolis

Choose your learning experience!

In-person workshop: Spend the day collaborating with fellow professionals through instructor-led activities, facilitated discussion, and hands-on coaching.

OR

Live online program: Experience the same practical curriculum through a multi-week, live online format that provides additional opportunities for project development, peer collaboration, instructor feedback, and iterative refinement between sessions.

Discount pricing is available for partners and companies sending three or more participants as well as Kelley School and IU alumni & staff. Contact us at kelleypd@iu.edu for related discount codes to apply at check out.

At checkout you can pay via credit card or PayPal immediately or choose to be sent an invoice that will hold your spot in the course. Payment options are also available for employers purchasing for their employees (see below under "Ask your employer").

Payment is due prior to the course start date. Email kelleypd@iu.edu to learn about payment options or assistance with invoicing.

Ask your employer to help cover the cost. Select "Send My Employer an Invoice" during the Payment step of check out. Use this payment method to request that an invoice be sent to you or another financial representative who will be paying on your behalf. Unless otherwise directed, you are responsible for sending the invoice to your employer for payment. If you need additional instructions for sending the invoice, please contact your Kelley School representative or kelleypd@iu.edu.

Interested in bringing this program to your company or organization? Email kelleypd@iu.edu to discuss our custom program options. 

AI is a powerful accelerator but without critical thinking, it can amplify bias and noise. This AI critical thinking training course helps leaders build disciplined reasoning habits and test ideas under pressure. With this AI training, you'll learn to leverage artificial intelligence as an intellectual partner to strengthen—not substitute—your professional judgment.

Learning objectives

Learn to harness AI as an intellectual partner. Through hands-on exercises, integration of AI for critical thinking development, and case-based discussions, you’ll gain the ability to:

  • Frame the right problem: Clarify objectives, constraints, and what would change your mind.
  • Build disciplined reasoning: Separate facts from opinions, spot logical gaps, and avoid false trade-offs.
  • Upgrade evidence quality: Evaluate sources, quantify uncertainty, and distinguish correlation from causation.
  • Counter bias in practice: Recognize confirmation, anchoring, and sunk-cost fallacies, using “bias interrupters” to reset in real time.
  • Use AI as a challenger: Test your ideas, surface counterarguments, and summarize pros and cons without outsourcing your judgment.

You’ll leave this critical thinking course with a repeatable decision-making routine, clearer reasoning, and an Action Learning Project that applies these tools directly to your organization.

Conceptual Agenda

This course teaches leaders how to make better decisions in an AI-enabled workplace by applying a disciplined critical-thinking framework, challenging evidence and assumptions, recognizing cognitive and AI-driven biases, and deliberately using AI as a challenger rather than a substitute for human judgment.

  1. Make thinking visible and structured.
    Participants learn a repeatable six-part model:
    Purpose → Question → Assumptions → Evidence → Reasoning → Conclusions/Implications.
    The idea is that better decisions come from examining how we are thinking, not simply getting to an answer.
  1. Interrogate rather than accept information.
    A major theme is distinguishing information that is clear, accurate, relevant, and sufficient from information that merely looks credible. The poll example is deliberately designed to show that evidence can be methodologically sound yet still insufficient to support the conclusion being drawn from it.
  1. Build disagreement into the decision process.
    “Alternatives” is positioned as a critical layer across every stage of thinking—not simply another step. Participants are repeatedly asked: What else could be true? What other explanation fits? What evidence are we ignoring? What if we're wrong?
  1. Understand how AI changes the cognitive risks.
    This is where the course becomes specifically AI-era critical thinking, rather than a traditional critical-thinking course. The deck focuses on AI's tendency to produce persuasive, precise, fluent, agreeable answers—and how those characteristics can trigger automation, fluency, and precision biases, while also creating anchoring and confirmation risks.
  1. Turn AI from an answer machine into a challenger.
    The prescribed relationship with AI is particularly important. Participants are taught to record their own judgment first, then deliberately assign AI roles such as premortem, steelman, outside view, Socratic coach, or skeptical CFO. The objective isn't “use AI to make the decision”; it's use AI to pressure-test your thinking before you make the decision.

Learn more on the Kelley site