Project Management Professional PMP · Free Practice Question Medium

Question 54

Freddy conducts a quarterly appraisal of his project stakeholders to keep his team apprised of any changes to their influence, interest, or skills. From several sources, Freddy confirms that Dong Jing recently acquired a certification in a useful data analytics platform for which Freddy's team is developing dashboards. Freddy wants to talk to Dong Jing about this to appraise his skills with the platform. His goal is to understand how much or how little detail to offer Dong Jing about his team's work. Unfortunately, Freddy and Dong Jing have not spoken much since Dong Jing started parking in Freddy's unofficial parking spot about a year ago. Which error should Freddy try to avoid?
  • A Recency error
  • B Personal bias
  • C Strictness or leniency error
  • D Central tendency error
Reveal correct answer

Correct answer: B

Explanation

Personal bias is a non-objective perspective based on an appraiser's experiences and preferences rather than objective measures. Appraisers should be cautious and skeptical about their ability to gauge a person's abilities with whom they have a conflict. The recency error occurs when an appraiser over-exaggerates a good or bad event simply because it occurred recently. Although this is like a personal bias, in this case, the length of time between the incident and the appraisal is likely to mitigate the recency effect. Central tendency error is the habit of assigning a middling rating to all employees for all skills, which is unlikely and unhelpful. The strictness or leniency error is the tendency for an appraiser to grade in an excessively strict or lenient manner.

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