As we go through life making decisions in our place of employment or in our personal lives, our thinking tends to be influenced by culture, education, family values or other outside sources. Most times we are not even aware that our thinking is not objective when reaching a decision, nor do we apply a step by step process to come to a decision. One method of arriving at a sound and unbiased decision is to apply the skills of critical thinking. Wikipedia defines critical thinking as “mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation” (para. 1). This paper will illustrate how one can apply critical thinking to a project at work using the University of Phoenix model for decision making (University of Phoenix, 2008).
For occupations in a field technical in nature, such as accounting, one does not think of the process of critical thinking being needed or used. Currently I am employed as an accountant for a company in the aviation industry and was recently assigned the task of writing procedures for the accounting department to use for cash transactions in regards to financing that the company would be receiving for expansion. We have four different companies that would require new accounts and procedures. The first step in the process was to read the documentation provided by the financing bank to get an understanding of what the bank required of the four companies and how cash transactions were to be handled, thus identifying the problem, which is the first step in the decision making process.
The next step of the model is to define criteria, goals, and objectives (University of Phoenix, 2008). All four companies would need new accounts but not all companies would need the same accounts. So, I had to determine what types of accounts would be needed such as a new cash account, a short-term liability account, a long-term liability account and a disbursement account. The new accounts would need to be added to the current chart of accounts, which is a listing...