You’ve been trained since birth to believe that obedience to proper authority is right and disobedience is wrong, and hence this bias comes naturally to you. It’s hidden underneath your good nature.

This message of being obedient had filled the parental, societal, and the school lessons of your childhood. It’s even carried forward in all the systems you encounter as adults now.

Early on, these people (parents, teachers) knew more than we did, and we found that taking their advice proved beneficial — partly because of their greater wisdom and partly because they controlled our rewards and punishments. As adults, the same benefits persist for the same reasons, though the authority figures are now employers, judges, and government leaders. Because their positions speak of greater access to information and power, it makes sense to comply with the wishes of properly constituted authorities. It makes so much sense, in fact, that we often do so when it makes no sense at all. — Influence: Science and Practice, Robert B. Cialdini.

The very first book of the Bible describes how failure to obey the ultimate authority resulted in the loss of paradise for Adam, Eve, and the rest of the human race. This is also what motivational writers, business pundits, startup advisors, CEOs, economists, consultants, and stock market gurus would also want to have you believe.

You look to those in power as having something special you lack —intellect, knowledge, or some spark of something you would like to see inside yourself. This plays well with your vanity, no matter how intelligent a person you are. This is why people sometimes subscribe to the beliefs of celebrities who endorse exotic religions, or denounce sound medicines.

This is also why celebrity endorsed ads work so well. When a celebrity player tells you to buy a particular brand of batteries, you generally don’t ask yourself if the player seems like an expert on electrochemical energy storage.

In general, you rarely go over the pros and cons of what an authority suggests. Hence, the worrisome situation arises when your “boss” makes a clearly wrong decision, and no one lower in the hierarchy thinks of questioning it.

If you team lead, boss, manager, or the CEO knows anything about this bias, she would definitely try to remind you and your colleagues over and over again not to follow her blindly, or act upon her decisions just because she asked. You should instead question her motives, be aware of her intentions, and when needed, counter her arguments and ideas if you happen to have better insight.

Unfortunately, many companies are light-years from this sort of foresight, especially those businesses with domineering CEOs — where employees are likely to keep their “lesser” opinions to themselves, much to the detriment of the business.