Openness
Openness is a frame of mind where even if someone you don't trust tells you something you don't like, you will still consider if what they are saying is correct.
If we trust someone, and they tell us something we like, we are totally open to what they are saying. This is the situation often found in information bubbles, where someone only surrounds themselves with people who agree with them. This results in an echo-chamber where the only ideas being discussed are those that everyone already agrees with.
When we don't trust someone - as we might if we have just met someone new - and they state something we don't like, we often conclude that they must be wrong.
If a new colleague joins your company, on their first day they will not have had a chance to earn your trust. If in your first meeting with them they say that research shows that consumers are no longer interested in your company's products, it is very likely that you will get upset and assume they are wrong.
When close-minded people are presented facts they don't like, from a source they don't trust, they tend to attack the person who brought the fact to their attention. Open-minded people first want to understand the source of the fact. An open-minded person would ask the new employee, "What is the source of your information?" If their source is credible, it should be analyzed. If the analysis proves their source to be correct, then people should accept it as fact. This, in essence, is the process of scientific research.
The term "Science" is often conflated to mean many things, but at its core, Science is a methodology. In most cases, instead of saying "Science" it is more accurate to say, "Scientific research." Further, as scientists have made discoveries for centuries and continue to do so every day, it is even more accurate to say, "Current scientific research." Where things become difficult to understand - even for scientists - is when "Science" is fully expanded into the fully accurate, "Current credible scientific research," which rightly indicates that not all scientific research is credible.
To address the problem of credibility, scientists who believe they have made groundbreaking discoveries must submit their research to a credible scientific journal, where it is critically analyzed and meticulously scrutinized by subject matter experts before being considered for publication. This process often leads to the rejection of scientific research as not being credible enough for publication in the most prestigious journals, forcing scientists to submit their research to less credible journals, in the hope of getting published at all. This is how the scientific community polices itself, and guards against poor scientific research which lacks credibility from becoming generally accepted fact.
To think like a scientist, you must be open-minded. Scientists cannot form a theory and then pursue only facts that support their theory. They cannot "Cherry pick" only the data that they like in order to formulate their theory, or their research will not be considered credible.
Modern enterprises all create, consume, and analyze data to understand market conditions, consumer behavior, customer preferences, the competitive landscape, financial forecasts, sales projections, economic data, and any other data a business deems important to its operation. All of this data must be interpreted and analyzed in order to make good decisions, and proper analysis requires that we be open to data that we may not like. In this way, the role of the modern professional is very similar to that of a scientist, in that they must be open to conclusions derived from data, which then become the facts of the business.
There was a time where businesses could afford to go with their gut, trust their instincts, and ignore data and hard facts. This was the time before the information revolution, before global competition, and when consumers had very few choices as to where to spend their money. That time is now long past, and successful businesses must look at cold, hard facts, and be open to what the facts are telling them, whether they like them or not.
In isolation, this should make sense. If the accounting department reports that revenues are declining, then that is a fact that needs to be addressed. However, if you take this same fact, and have it presented by someone in accounting that no one trusts and perhaps even some people dislike, there is a good chance that no one will believe them. All too often, regardless of someone's qualifications, we still need the person telling us something we don't like to be someone we trust in order to believe them.
An open-minded professional must look past the person presenting a fact and focus instead on the source of the data that the fact is based on. Instead of saying, "I trust what they are saying because I trust them," we should say, "I have verified what they are saying independently by looking at the same sources they did." In other words, the person delivering the data should have no influence on how that data is analyzed and interpreted by the people they are speaking to.
When we train ourselves to look past the person presenting a fact, we now have to conquer any biases we might have against believing that fact, which is far easier said than done. Even if a person we like and trust tells us that clocks will record time differently depending on their speed, that some stars in the sky may no longer exist, that Pluto is not a planet, that Burma is now called Myanmar, or that the Tyrannosaurus Rex had feathers, it can be very difficult to believe.
If we have trouble believing facts that have been repeatedly proven by the smartest people on the planet, how can we believe a colleague when they tell us something we don't want to hear? Ultimately, it depends on how open we are to having our beliefs challenged, how willing we are to update what we already think we know, and how humble we are in accepting that we cannot know everything.
The job of an open-minded professional is to listen to people, check their sources, do our own analysis, and decide if what they are saying is actually true. If you determine that what they are saying is true, then you can, should, and must change your mind, as the world of business is unforgiving to people who deny factual reality, and instead trust their gut and only the opinions of people they like. This is a recipe for disaster that is entirely avoidable by having nothing more than an open mind.