The Standard · Strategy and Leadership
Decision Making
Makes decisions with AI-assisted analysis and knows when the analysis cannot be trusted.
You use an AI assistant to frame choices, compare options, examine assumptions, and explain recommendations under uncertainty. You may gain options and exposed gaps, yet it can invent evidence, reinforce preferences, or make reasoning sound certain.
The exam for Decision Making is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Decision Making, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to expose overlooked options, material gaps, and plausible futures affecting the decision.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with the decision, purpose, accountable reader, evidence, criteria, constraints, and required recommendation format.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the assistant's analysis into a reasoned decision record that compares options and explains your judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check the assistant's claims, calculations, assumptions, and option comparisons against supplied evidence before deciding.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep confidential stakeholder details and sensitive case information out of the decision brief, and decline unsafe requests.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which decision elements the assistant may analyse, which judgement stays with you, and who approves the outcome.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A decision brief from incomplete evidence, explicit criteria, constraints, and a recommendation.
- 02
A comparison of options across plausible futures, including an AI-generated alternative and material uncertainties.
- 03
A decision record from an assistant's analysis, with verified claims, trade-offs, and approval points.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in decision making. They briefed the assistant with decision criteria and evidence, caught unsupported assumptions, and delivered a defensible recommendation.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Decision Making
- Who it is for
- Managers, directors, project leads, analysts, consultants, and specialists who make consequential recommendations.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Project Planning
Plans projects with AI and stress-tests the schedule, dependencies and risks.
Practice only
- Agile Teams
Runs agile work with AI in the loop and the team in charge.
- Change Management
Leads change with AI-assisted analysis and communication and keeps the human case central.
- Event Planning
Plans events with AI and verifies logistics, budgets and commitments.
- Strategic Thinking
Thinks strategically with AI as a challenger and reaches conclusions they can defend.
- Innovation
Uses AI to generate and test ideas and judges which are worth pursuing.
- Design Thinking
Applies design thinking with AI for research, ideation and prototyping, with users at the centre.
- Stakeholder Management
Manages stakeholders with AI-assisted mapping and communication that stays accurate and discreet.
Everything in Strategy and Leadership, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Decision Making covers this skill, and AI+ Pro teaches it as a course. Neither is required to pass.