While working on a chapter about the fallacy of common sense, revisiting Gary Klein’s 1998 book, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, gives more support for the idea that individual integrity can be scaled.
Before moving on, it’s important that you understand what we mean by “pattern library.”
Klein doesn’t use “pattern library” as a formal term; rather, it serves as an underlying concept throughout his discussion of expertise and Recognition-Primed Decision-Making. According to Klein, extended experience within a domain enables individuals to develop an extensive internal inventory of recognized situations, including what resembles a normal state, variations on the norm, and subtle deviations that may indicate problems. This inventory is not stored as explicit rules or checklists, but instead as perceptual templates, similar to how a chess master recognizes familiar board positions rather than calculating each move from first principles.
Klein’s primary example is the fireground commander. After more than twenty years of experience, the commander has developed a mental library of what an ordinary kitchen fire should look, sound, and feel like, including heat levels, flame behavior, and building responses. In one incident, upon entering a house that later collapsed, the commander sensed that something was amiss, although he could not articulate it specifically. He ordered an evacuation moments before the floor gave way. The fire was actually located in the basement, contrary to expectations, and the commander’s pattern-matching system detected the anomaly before conscious reasoning could provide an explanation.
Klein proposes that (the mechanism is) recognition, rather than calculation, underlies expert decision-making. When an expert encounters a new situation, the mind does not generate multiple options for comparison, as classical decision theory suggests. Instead, it rapidly matches the situation to the internal library, retrieves the most relevant pattern, and derives an immediate sense of which cues are significant, what to anticipate, and what an appropriate initial response would be. The expert then mentally simulates this option; if it proves inadequate, the expert modifies it or selects the next most plausible pattern, rather than beginning a comparative analysis from the beginning.
Three characteristics distinguish this library from simple memorized rules. First, it is constructed through direct experience with feedback, rather than abstract instruction; it cannot be acquired from a manual, but only through repeated exposure to real situations with tangible consequences. This explains why novices in Klein’s research consistently lacked such a library, regardless of the extent of their formal training. Second, the patterns are stored primarily below the level of conscious articulation; experts often cannot explain why something appears incorrect, only that it does, which accounts for the difficulty the firefighter experienced in articulating his “sixth sense.” Third, the library is domain-specific and non-transferable; for example, the fireground commander’s expertise does not assist in interpreting financial markets or negotiating, as expertise developed in one domain does not generalize to rapid, reliable intuition in another.
The implication for integrity is that your poor judgment is primarily an epistemic, rather than a moral, failure. However, once an you become aware of the limitations of your pattern library, persisting in acting with high confidence constitutes a moral failure. Klein’s framework distinguishes between forgivable ignorance and inexcusable willful ignorance.
The Dark Arts of Leadership 
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