You could be automating yourself out of the exact skills that make you valuable. When you let AI do the thinking and make decisions for you, you’re training yourself to accept answers without question.
But AI actually helps us practice our critical thinking and makes us better at it. This is about getting good at asking the right questions, not necessarily about getting the right answers. We maintain agency of the thinking process and final decision. We still make the call. AI just helps us.
When you approach AI as a thinking partner rather than a task doer, every interaction becomes an opportunity to make your decision-making better.
When you systematically challenge AI outputs and ask for reasons behind every recommendation, you develop stronger evaluation skills. These same analytical habits show up in your team meetings, strategic reviews, and decision-making conversations.
The framework is simple. Three levels of critical thinking that turn any AI conversation into deeper insight:
Basic Evaluation – Ask for alternatives, pros and cons, confidence levels
Different Views – Get stakeholder perspectives, decision trees, comparative analysis
Assumption Challenging – Question what might not be true, explore failure scenarios, run what-if tests
Remember: good questions still need good context. Give AI the background, constraints, and goals it needs to think with you.
The carousel below shows exactly what this looks like in practice. Three real examples from social media planning to pricing strategy to account-based marketing. You’ll see how better questioning turns any conversation into strategic advantage.
Same AI. Same context. Completely different outcomes.
Every day, teams walk away from high value insights because they never learned to think systematically about what AI tells them. The teams who do this well get deeper insights and make better decisions.
Want the complete framework with 18 sample critical thinking questions? Check out my latest newsletter (see link in comments) on critical thinking with AI where I break down the full approach that’s helping turn every AI conversation into strategic advantage.
Newsletter on how to think critically with AI plus sample questions: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-only-sharp-your-questions-how-critical-thinking-turns-liza-adams-qtdmc.