The greater your success as a leader, the more established your organization and its culture, likely the more protected you are against new ideas. You do things a certain way, a proven way. The way you operate has momentum, therefore the harder you must work to challenge your own beliefs and to discern truths that may contradict your perceptions.
Therefore, you need a system for gathering and absorbing new ideas.
It’s not my intention to suggest any one structure or approach. What works for you may be very different from what works for me. But I can suggest that the core of any such system must be curiosity.
For example, let’s say there are two possible reactions when you encounter an intelligent person with a belief that is contrary to yours. The first option is to reject their point of view. The second possibility is to be curious about why they feel differently. In the latter situation, you might ask them a series of questions to better understand their thought process and the data they possess.
I’d also like to suggest that in many cases the opportunities to learn and experiment lie at the edges of your daily routine. That is, 90% of what each of us does follows a time-tested pattern. (In my case, I meet with clients according to a schedule that works for each of them.) Your goal isn’t to challenge everything and create chaos; it’s to watch for opportunities to learn, ask questions and be curious.
If you are serious about avoiding confirmation bias, you need a system that protects you from that trap. I’d submit that many leaders lack a system that is robust enough to test their beliefs and identify the ones that are no longer serving their original purpose.