Why The Cliffside Holding Company Of Massapequa ( Chcm )...

Introduction Critical thinking is a process that can help us make decisions in our life by thinking from different perspectives. It is a device that helps evaluate ideas through the testing of statements and the reasoning behind them. Just like any other skill, one must learn how to use critical thinking before utilizing it. In this paper I will use the 11-step method from the text â€Å"Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking (11th Ed.), developed by M. Neil Browne and Stuart M. Keeley (2015). The book is an essential tool for developing critical thinking skills and will be used to conduct an evaluation on a memorandum identifying whether the Cliffside Holding Company of Massapequa (CHCM) would establish a†¦show more content†¦Finding an author’s main point is the first step in deciding whether you will accept or reject it (p.27). In order to search for the issue in this memorandum, Browne and Keeley (2015) suggests that we find what is causing ques tions and controversies in the discussion, and what the stimulus is for what is being said (p. 24). Throughout the memorandum, Mr. Anil Ravaswami (Vice President of Human Resources) is questioning whether a leadership development program is necessary for the junior financial executives and if it is even cost-effective for the company. Therefore, the issue in the memorandum is clearly stated as whether the Cliffside Holding Company of Massapequa should fund and establish a new leadership program for their junior insurance executives. Now this brings us to the question of what kind of issue this is: descriptive or prescriptive? Browne and Keeley (2015) describe descriptive issues as those that raise questions about the accuracy of descriptions of the past, present, or future, and prescriptive issues as those that raise questions about what we should do or what is right or wrong, good or bad (pp. 24-25). That said, this issue is prescriptive because they demand prescriptive answers bas ed on ethical or moral issues, and using the phrase â€Å"should† is a clear indicator of a prescriptive issue (pp. 24-25). Moreover, Browne and Keeley (2015) describe prescriptive issues as those that raise questions about whether something is good or bad, right or wrong (p.