We are told not to judge if we don’t want to be judged.

Yet we are judged, by our customers who choose between us and a competitor, by our employees who choose between allying their careers with our destiny, and by our peers, allies, and passive-aggressive antagonists on social media. We are taught to respect others, especially other cultures. And it’s true that new perspectives enrich our outlook, and that we are usually infected with a bias against the unfamiliar, especially when it suits our egos to deny that a new idea is superior to our own (it happens more often than we think. Please let’s not be saboteurs… ? ).

But battling our emotional contempt in the face of what is foreign does not automatically imply having respect for all other cultures and ideas. “Respecting” female mutilation because “it is a sin to judge” is unacceptable.

Judgment is essential. Judgments demarcate the important from the accidental, a necessary component of focus. Judgment declares a victorious idea among alternatives, not as a universal and determining truth, but to prevent hesitation and thus allow progress.

Instead of avoiding judgment as a sin, we should invest in it as a competence. Instead of condemning the act of judging to avoid misjudgments, we should celebrate the skills inherent in great judgments, such as avoiding bias, clarifying the essentials, combining data with vision, being logical with our principles, and prioritizing between seemingly incomparable options.

Observing the world with dispassionate serenity is not a recipe for progress or learning. Great products, great design, great UX, great companies, great cultures, great writers, great religions all rely on a strong set of judgments.

As such, if we avoid judgment, we avoid creating great things.