September 23, 2026·
post
Digital Bias
Digital Bias
A newfound behaviour in problem-solving is finding and implementing a digital way to solve the problem.
- Employee queries? Bot.
- Employees reporting that they're mentally drained? Partner with a mental health startup.
- Customers struggling to understand something? Add another app feature, or build a whole app.
The technology and cost-reduction narrative does the heavy lifting.
And because digital products are so easy to discover, procure, integrate and roll out, the distance between "we found a solution" and "we implemented it" has become remarkably short, which can feel like speed of progress.
But here's the problem:
Implemented is increasingly being mistaken for solved.
- A chatbot can handle employee queries. It doesn't necessarily mean employees' problems are being resolved.
- A mental health app can give employees access to therapy. It doesn't necessarily mean the workplace is any less mentally exhausting.
- A self-service portal can reduce support tickets. It doesn't necessarily mean the underlying customer problem has disappeared.
Digital solutions are exceptionally good at making a solution visible, scalable and measurable.
That can make them deceptively satisfying.
This isn't really a technology problem. It's a problem-solving bias: the availability and speed of a digital solution makes us prematurely treat implementation as resolution.
- Sometimes the right answer is a bot.
- Sometimes it's a process change.
- Sometimes it's another person.
- Sometimes it's removing the thing that created the problem in the first place.
- And sometimes, annoyingly, the problem doesn't need technology at all, but someone seeing the door.
Digital Bias is the tendency to reach for a digital solution because it is available, accessible and easy to implement, rather than asking what would actually solve the problem and prevent it from recurring.
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