Conscientiousness is a personality style. Generally, it means to be dutiful, reliable, express attention to detail, persevere, exercise good time management skills — to have a thoughtful and efficient work ethic.

Hiring a conscientiousness person is hiring a person that is committed to doing their best and fulfilling promises.

A way to test a candidates level of conscientiousness is to examine how they make decisions. And a fine model to use is an After Action Review. Here’s how you might use this model.

1. Ask about a previous and consequential decision that a candidate made in a previous project/job.

2. Ask about the outcome the candidate hoped to achieve.

3. Ask about what the candidate knew going into the decision.

4. Ask about what first, second, and third order the effects the candidate considered. What was most likely to happen?

5. Ask how the candidate brought others into the decision making process. How did they query the brains of others for inputs? How did they assess those inputs? What ultimately was incorporated into the candidates analysis of a go-forward plan?

6. What decision did the candidate make? How did they communicate the decision?

7. What were the effects?

8. What learnings were pulled forward?

You can see, most of the meat happens at questions 4 and 5 because that’s where decision making friction happens — the anxiety of “what if”.

Conscientious candidates demonstrate thoughtful decision making processes that incorporate many inputs from many types of people, thoughts about the second and third order effects, and continuous improvement implementations.

You can use this same framework for hiring artistic talent talent too.