Begin with purpose.
What are we preparing people to accomplish, for whom, and why? The answer should shape the content, the experience, and the evidence we accept as learning.
Educator. Business practitioner. A student of judgment.
For what?
Before we decide what to add,
we should know what we’re
trying to accomplish.
I’m Brett Whitaker. My work connects education, leadership, and professional practice through a shared question: what responsibility do we carry for the people relying on us?
Explore my approachBusiness experience. Classroom practice. Shared responsibility.
01
About Brett
The business.
The classroom.
The people in both.
My perspective has been shaped by work at EY, Amazon, Nike, Mattel, and ZipRecruiter, and by teaching at Indiana University and The University of Texas at Austin.
That experience keeps bringing me back to the same challenge: technically sound work still has to help someone understand, decide, and act. Knowing the answer is part of the responsibility. Understanding what someone needs from it is another.
I approach teaching and leadership with that responsibility in view. I want to help people understand the business around a problem, make their assumptions visible, and explain what their analysis means for the people relying on it.
02
Learning philosophy
Give judgment
something to do.
If judgment is a capability we want people to develop, the learning experience has to require them to exercise it.
Make the situation matter.
Give people a business context, someone who needs their work, and a decision with consequences. Ask them to determine what matters before they decide what to calculate.
Build the capacity to act.
Support the work with guidance, feedback, and another opportunity to practice. Look for how people use what they know when the situation changes.
What this looks like in the room
Two teaching examples
Tax strategy · Executive communication
Seven minutes.
One audit committee.
A student tax team has seven minutes to brief an audit committee on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The challenge is to turn technical knowledge into a useful executive conversation: what matters to the company, what does the committee need to understand, and where should it focus its attention?
Can the committee use the analysis to make a better decision?
Professional judgment · Communication
One workday.
Four different demands.
An accounting director’s email. General counsel’s call. An auditor’s memo request. A CFO’s text. Each exchange changes what the recipient needs and how the work should be communicated.
What must change in the communication, and what responsibility stays?
03
Leadership philosophy
“Don’t throw it over
the cubicle wall.
Walk it over.”
Take responsibility for what your work enables others to understand and decide.
A professional’s work enters someone else’s situation. Leadership means understanding that situation, explaining the implications, and staying engaged as the analysis becomes a decision.
For me, that starts with listening to the business around the question. It continues through the conversation: what do we know, what are we assuming, and what should happen next?
Delivery is a moment. Responsibility carries through the exchange.
04
Writing & ideas
Questions I’m
working on.
A growing space for essays, teaching examples, and reflections from practice. These are the ideas taking shape.
Education
For What?
What should our answer about professional purpose change about the next class we teach?
AI & professional judgment
Human involvement is only the beginning.
Saying people retain judgment leaves an essential question: what makes us confident they will exercise it?
Leadership
What happens after the answer?
On carrying responsibility through the conversation, the decision, and the work that follows.