Paper

TRUC TRAN

AMBA 610

Professor Murray Blank

TRUC TRAN

AMBA 610

Professor Murray Blank

Introduction

“No one wants to be another person’s mental slave” (Browne & Keeley, 2012 p. 1). Every moment of every day, we are bombarded by information. In today’s world, with the availability of information, comments and advice from experts on any topics at our fingertips, how do we form our own conclusion? Asking the Right Questions provides us with the tools to avoid simply accepting the information that we received but to think critically of the information before forming our own opinion. Critical thinking is the process in which the information, facts and theories that we received are gathered and analyzed carefully to make effective decisions. The book provides us with the questions that we can use to form our own opinion, a value process that should be applied by everyone. This paper will evaluate a memo from Mr. Anil Ravaswami using the ten step critical thinking method presented in Asking the Right Questions (Browne & Keeley, 2012 p. 9). The ten questions will help me identify bias opinions, fallacies, evidence and help to identify rival causes for reasons used in the memo as Mr. Ravaswami persuades his CEO, Ms. Cynthia Castle not to fund a new leadership development program for their junior insurance executives (A. Ravaswami, personal communication, October 10, 2012).

What are the issues and the conclusions?

“An issue is a question or controversy responsible for the conversation or discussion” (Browne & Keeley, 2012 p. 19). Sometimes the issue is explicitly stated; other times it is hard to find. “A conclusion is the message that the speaker or writer wishes you to accept” (Browne & Keeley, 2012 p. 21). Using clue number 3 provided by Asking the Right Question to look in likely locations, I was able to locate the conclusion easily. The conclusion is at the end of the memo. In the memo from Mr. Anil Ravaswami, Vice-President of Human...