Are These Cognitive Biases Killing Your Training Programme?

On paper, training programmes can look like a success. People have shown up, and the content has been well received. The feedback is positive, and there’s a sense that in the moment, something useful has happened. And yet weeks later, very little seems to have shifted. The same pressures trigger the same reactions, and whatever insights came out of the workshop don’t reliably show up in day-to-day work.

This gap between learning and doing is so common that it’s almost taken for granted. Training can become something businesses do to tick a box, rather than something that meaningfully changes how people behave. When results don’t follow, the easy thing to do is blame the quality of training content.

The issue is often much deeper than that. Every L&D programme is built on the assumption about how people absorb information and make decisions under real-life constraints. Many of these assumptions feel reasonable. The problem is that they don’t always match how the human brain actually works when attention is limited in a stressful environment and old routines are easier than new ones.

This is where cognitive biases start to creep in and they can shape how training programmes are designed. Left unexamined, cognitive biases create programmes that feel productive on the day but fail with implementation in the weeks and months after.

This article looks at some of the most common cognitive biases embedded in L&D initiatives, how they undermine implementation and what you can do to design training that translates into meaningful behavioural change.

The Illusion of Learning Bias AKA confidence over competency 

One of the most common traps in training design is mistaking confidence or familiarity for competence. When employees recall a model or recognise a concept during a workshop, it can create a powerful sense that learning has taken place in what is known as the illusion of learning or fluency illusion. What’s actually happened is surface-level fluency, meaning the brain has recognised information it has just encountered, but has no mastery of it.

The fluency illusion may be particularly common in leadership development programmes when dealing with people who seem loud and confident. 

Author Paul Gibbons explains the danger of this cognitive bias towards leadership training in The Science of Organisational Change by referencing the work of the philosopher Isiah Berlin, who, in a 1953 essay, categorised thinkers and writers as hedgehogs or foxes. Hedgehogs have a big idea and are specialised and ideological one-trick ponies. They respond badly to challenge, deal badly with complexity, like straightforward solutions, and generally do not play well with foxes. They are exactly the attributes that often get promotions, and are weakest leading complex, risky endeavours…this to me is incomprehensible in a complex organisation, a multi-national, or a volatile trading environment…

Foxes know less but about lots of things, are self-critical, study the evidence, and are cautious and flexible. It sounds as if we want our word run by foxes, but quite the opposite is the case. We vote for hedgehogs and employ them as CEOs - their self-confidence can be infectious and ‘strong leadership’ is often confused with certainty.”

The illusion of learning can be reinforced by traditional training delivery formats like slide decks and even well-organised workshops that make information feel logical and clear in the moment. Participants may leave feeling confident, but as soon as they are back in real conditions of dealing with competing priorities, their knowledge doesn’t translate to action.

Moving past this bias requires a shift in what learning means. Instead of asking whether people understood the material, organisations need to ask whether they can use it in context. This means designing learning experiences around application i.e. with scenarios and decision-making roleplays under realistic constraints. 

It also means accepting that learning isn’t a one-off event. Spaced repetition and practice over time help consolidate skills. Measuring impact days or weeks later, rather than after delivery, gives a far more honest picture of whether learning has stuck.

The Optimism Bias AKA the ‘our people will do it’ fallacy 

The unspoken belief with training programmes is that once people know what to do, they’ll do it. This is based on the assumption that motivation and good intentions will carry new behaviours forward with little support.

Blind optimism isn’t enough. Every individual works differently within a company and requires different demands on their time. Even when people genuinely want to apply new skills, they’re pulled back into familiar patterns with deadlines and workloads. Without reinforcement, the path of least resistance will win.

So, when the optimism bias is present, training ends at delivery. There are no follow-ups or protected spaces for practice. Employees return to environments that reward old behaviours.

Addressing this requires designing for behaviour change and learning transfer. New skills need to show up in daily workflows through small and manageable actions. This can be done through prompts and reminders to help bring the learning back into awareness at the point of use.

Accountability also matters. Peer groups and coaching sessions signal that a company expects change and is willing to support it. Most importantly, rewards and recognition need to reflect implementation. When attendance is praised but application is ignored, the message is clear: showing up matters more than changing.

The Confirmation Bias AKA building programmes to defend existing beliefs

L&D is rarely neutral because programmes are shaped, consciously or not, by what trainers and leaders already believe about performance and culture. Confirmation bias sets in when training is created to validate those beliefs rather than challenge them.

Paul Gibbons gives a strong example of how the confirmation bias goes hand in hand with the availability bias, even at major companies like PwC:

“Partners at PwC, having collaboratively sold a major job, used to have to weigh their percentage contribution (and therefore reward) on a scale of 1 - 100% with 100% being “I did it all.” This was done secretly, then the results tallied, and then differences arbitrated. The system was dropped because four partners would come up with a total contribution of 250% and persuading someone who self-assessed at 60% to accept 20% with gratitude and grace proved trickery.

This was not greed; it was the availability bias. They were simply aware of how hard they had worked, how often they had stayed until midnight, how many stresses they faced, and how many times they met the client, and of course, they were much less aware of how much their colleagues had done.”

Confirmation and availability biases show up in subtle ways in training programmes e.g. with difficult data being sidelined or feedback that contradicts the dominant narrative being softened. When this continues, training becomes about reinforcing the status quo instead of developing competence.

Breaking this pattern starts with deliberate challenge. Pre-mortems, asking what would cause a programme to fail before it launches, help to reveal blind spots. Another option is to involve external voices or cross-functional perspectives to disrupt echo chambers of bad advice.

Crucially, data needs to be used honestly. Metrics around behaviour, engagement, turnover and performance should inform programme design, even when they point to inconvenient truths. 

The Planning Fallacy AKA underestimating the time needed for real change

The planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete tasks. And in in the case of training, companies fall into the trap of being optimistic about how quickly behaviour will change. They expect that as soon as a workshop is completed, attendees will immediately begin to act in a different way. 

Only habits are stubborn and they are reinforced by years of repetition and organisational pressure. Expecting employees to shift after a single intervention sets both leaders and learners up for disappointment.

Therefore, whhen the planning fallacy happens, training is treated as an event rather than an ongoing process. Momentum fades quickly, and without ongoing enforcement, new behaviours never consolidate. People may even feel they’ve failed when in reality the training design was unrealistic.

Designing for real change involves creating a clear and realistic timeline with consistent check ins. For example, reinforcement cycles of 30, 60 and 90 days may help learners keep skills at the front of their minds and address challenges that appear. 

This should all be underpinned by allocating practice time. If learning is expected to happen only in the margins of an already full workload, it will never be done properly.

The Social Desirability Bias AKA fake feedback leading to fake results 

The social desirability bias is when individuals reply to surveys or interviews in ways that make them appear favourable to the person asking the questions. They will do so at the expense of voicing their real opinions or behaviours.

L&D programmes are vulnerable to this bias because participants want to appear to be engaged and supportive, especially when feedback isn’t anonymous or feels visible. The problem is that positive sentiment doesn’t equal impact. Programmes can score highly on satisfaction while producing little behavioural change. When this happens, companies are left with misleading data and no clear path to improvement.

To counter this, feedback needs to focus on behaviour over enjoyment. Asking people what they’ve changed, what they’ve tried or what they’ve struggled with produces far more useful data than asking whether they liked a session.

Collecting data privately and over time also matters. Behavioural indicators like follow-through and observed changes are more reliable than immediate reactions. Honest feedback may be less flattering, but it’s the only kind that leads to better training.

The work to save your training programme starts now 

Recognising these cognitive biases won’t magically fix your training programme. There’s a temptation, once the patterns are named, to believe that the hard work is done. That awareness alone will lead to better design and better outcomes. Awareness is the starting point. 

What changes is the quality of the questions you ask next. When you take cognitive bias seriously, you’ll stop looking for quick wins and start designing for reality. You’ll accept that behaviour change is slow and uneven, but you’ll choose consistency over novelty and follow-through over fanfare.

Ultimately, addressing cognitive bias won’t remove the complexity of helping learners apply new behaviours. However, it will give you a way to keep refining your programme until you start to see noticeable changes one step at a time.