By Francisco Veloso
Judgement is becoming an increasingly valuable leadership skill. Developing it requires more opportunities to have our assumptions challenged, not fewer.
AI excels at identifying patterns as well as surfacing existing knowledge and plausible recommendations. But leadership is rarely exercised in situations where an answer is obvious. It matters most when important variables are missing, when competing priorities collide, and when the most popular solution is not necessarily the right one.
As AI moves into every corner of the enterprise, independent judgement may become one of the most valuable leadership skills of all. By design, AI gravitates towards what is known, visible and statistically likely. Yet breakthrough ideas and strategic pivots often emerge from perspectives that sit outside the dominant pattern.
The same judgement is increasingly required at an organisational level. Leaders are making choices about where AI should be deployed, how work should be organised around it and what role people should continue to play alongside it. These are not technical decisions; they are management decisions with significant implications for how organisations create value.
This is where responsible leadership becomes essential. AI can be used to augment or substitute. It can help people become more effective or gradually narrow the scope of their work. It can open new possibilities for value creation or focus exclusively on efficiency. Technology may create these options, but leaders decide which path to pursue.
Blending AI fluency with human judgement
Making those choices well requires a mastery of AI tools and a strong understanding of how to create tangible value with the technology – not just AI for AI’s sake. At INSEAD, developing AI fluency is now a given, embedded throughout our programmes and teaching.
But if we stopped at the technological layer, we would only be doing half the job. For future leaders to use intelligence responsibly, they must also develop judgement. Good judgement means recognising trade-offs, questioning assumptions, understanding what matters and making sound decisions when there is no obvious right answer.
Judgement develops when ideas are tested against competing viewpoints and assumptions that challenge our own. For decades, this has been one of INSEAD’s defining strengths. In classrooms shaped by extraordinary diversity of backgrounds, industries and cultures, students are constantly challenged by knowledgeable faculty to defend their reasoning and reconsider what they take for granted.
A strategy that appears compelling through one lens can look entirely different through another. Risks emerge that had previously gone unnoticed. Assumptions that felt self-evident are questioned. The result is a much richer understanding of the trade-offs and perspectives that underpin complex decisions.
Learning from organisations, bringing insight back to the classroom
The classroom is only one part of that process. The questions students grapple with are informed by the organisations our faculty investigate and the challenges leaders face in practice. INSEAD professors work closely with companies around the world to understand both successful and unsuccessful approaches to AI adoption and develop frameworks for responsible implementation.
For instance, Professor Phanish Puranam’s research examines how organisations can remain human-centric as AI becomes more deeply embedded in decision-making and work. In the classroom, he translates those ideas by asking students to build and test specialised AI agents, exploring exactly where human judgement, intervention and coordination remain most critical. They design teams of AI agents and experiment with how they interact, exposing the points at which human leadership still matters most.
Such AI-driven learning runs throughout the INSEAD experience. With immersive AI case studies, participants interact directly with AI-powered avatars representing different stakeholders and viewpoints. Scenarios evolve in response to questions, with new facts, dilemmas and trade-offs emerging.
As individual and group participants make real-time decisions, they receive immediate, tailored feedback on their reasoning and performance. In doing so, they practice how to exercise judgement by challenging machine outputs, weighing competing perspectives and translating information into action.
Across our executive education offering, we help senior leaders develop the capabilities needed to lead responsibly through disruption. Professor Sameer Hasija, Dean of Executive Education, stresses the need to develop the meta-skills that increasingly define effective leadership in an AI-driven world: learning agility, critical reflection, prioritisation and the judgement to make difficult trade-offs under pressure.
Whether discussing organisational transformation, AI adoption or governance, the emphasis remains the same: helping leaders understand what the technology can do, as well as how to make better decisions with it. The AI for Boards programme is one example, applying these principles directly to the oversight of AI strategy and execution.
The INSEAD Initiative on Responsible AI Leadership
Our work extends even further. The questions AI raises about work, organisations and leadership demand new research, new partnerships and new forms of engagement with business and society.
This is the thinking behind IN:AI, the INSEAD Initiative on Responsible AI Leadership. IN:AI brings together three strands of work that need to be tightly interconnected. The first is research: generating rigorous insight into how AI is reshaping organisations, markets and society. The second is education: leverage cutting edge research to help leaders understand AI and use it responsibly. The third is impact and engagement: working alongside companies, policymakers and our global alumni community to test ideas in practice and understand emerging challenges as they unfold.
Bringing these strands together helps ensure that teaching remains grounded in real organisational challenges, that research addresses the questions leaders are actively grappling with and that insights generated through both can inform practice beyond the classroom.
At its core, IN:AI explores how human and machine intelligence can work together to create value, and how leaders can ensure these technologies enhance rather than diminish human capability.
AI may be a technological breakthrough, but its consequences will be determined through decisions about leadership, strategy, organisational design and transformation. These are not new questions for INSEAD – they have long been central to our research and teaching. Developing leaders with the judgement to make those choices responsibly is where we can make our greatest contribution.
Francisco Veloso
