Skip to content
Founderz: Responsible Use of AI home

in collaboration with Microsoft

All scenarios

Workplace scenario · 12 of 13

A junior colleague’s analysis looks perfect, but they can’t explain it

Clean charts, confident conclusions and no clear idea of how they got there.

The situation

A new team member hands in an impressive AI-assisted analysis. When you ask how they reached one conclusion, they aren’t sure. It’s due to a client on Friday.

Principles involved

What do you do?

Choose the option you would take, then open it to see how it plays out. Reviewing the other options is part of the exercise.

Option A: Send it. The analysis looks right.

Risky

Nobody on the team can defend it if the client asks, and nobody knows yet whether it’s right.

Option B: Redo it yourself.

Safe, but it costs you

The client gets a sound analysis, and your colleague learns nothing.

Option C: Sit with them for thirty minutes: what they asked, what the AI did and what they checked. Fix it together.

The best choice

The work gets checked, and your colleague learns to think first next time. It may be the best thirty minutes of your week.

Option D: Ban AI for junior staff.

Safe, but it costs you

They’ll use it anyway, without guidance. Teach the practice instead.

Takeaway

Use AI in a way that leaves people sharper. For junior colleagues, the review conversation is where the learning happens.

Sources

What each source establishes, and its limits. The practices and recommendations on this page are ours, and the facts come from the sources. See every source we use.

  1. The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research (CHI 2025) · April 25, 2025 · Peer-reviewed research In a survey of 319 knowledge workers sharing 936 examples, higher confidence in generative AI was associated with less reported critical thinking, and higher self-confidence with more. Limits: Self-reported and cross-sectional: it shows an association, not measured skill loss.