See your judgment again from another person's place
“We endeavour to examine our own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial spectator would examine it.”
At a glance
- A decision easily looks reasonable from the seat in which we made it. Adam Smith asks us to create imaginative distance: how would a fair and impartial spectator with no stake in the outcome examine our motive and its effects?
- This perspective is not cold objectivity without feeling.
- It is a practice of reducing the size that self-love gives our own circumstances and restoring the weight of circumstances we have made small for others.
Today’s reflection
Adam Smith (1723–1790) was not only a thinker about markets but also a moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), he examined how people imagine others' feelings, approve or criticize conduct, and come to judge their own actions. Today's sentence is a short direct quotation from Part III, Chapter I; the Korean is a natural translation. Smith's impartial spectator is neither an emotionless judge nor a formula that always supplies the right answer. Through encounters with actual spectators, we develop an internal standpoint from which to correct the excuses and distortions of self-love. Impartiality therefore is not completed inside one person's head. It also requires hearing the experience of those affected, checking whether our information is partial, and revising judgment when necessary.
- Judgment needs distance. Feeling that I am right is not the same as having fair grounds, so imagine the question a person without a stake would ask.
- A shift in perspective cannot end as speculation. Imagine the affected person's position, then ask about their actual experience and let the answer correct your picture.
- Fairness is not always identical outcomes. It begins by making visible and explainable how a decision distributes benefits, costs, and risk.
A leader's decision often leaves larger costs with people other than the decision-maker. A shorter schedule can appear as performance to a leader and as overtime to a team; a frictionless sign-up can appear as conversion to a company and as uncertainty to a customer. The impartial spectator moves attention from ‘My intention was good’ to the question of who actually bears which effects. It is not a device for avoiding decisions, but a way to discover unseen costs and act more responsibly.
Practice for today
Run a five-line impartial-spectator check on one important decision today: (1) the decision you plan to make, (2) the facts you have confirmed, (3) who receives the benefit, (4) who bears the cost and risk, and (5) the first question a fair person without a stake would ask.
Put that question to one person affected by the decision, then change one element in response to what you hear.
Question for today
Would the decision I now feel certain about look the same from the seat of the people it affects and from that of a fair, impartial spectator?
Readers’ Reflections
What did this bring to mind? A few lines are enough.
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