“Its primary value is to serve as a check on a dominant mind-set that can develop over time among even the best analysts who have followed an issue and formed strong consensus that there is only one way of looking at their issue.”US Government · A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis · 2009 · «A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis» (US Government, martie 2009), secțiunea «Devil’s Advocacy» — «Value Added», p. 17
A single consensus calls for a devil's advocate; two strong camps call for Team A and Team B.
Both techniques are contrarian: they do not build an analysis from scratch but attack an existing one. The difference between them is diagnostic, and the primer warns that analysts often confuse them. Devil's advocacy is used when there is ONE dominant consensus: an analyst with doubts, or one designated by a manager, builds the best possible case for an alternative explanation. The steps: summarise the mainline judgement and key assumptions; pick the assumptions most open to challenge; check whether any information is questionable, whether deception is possible, or whether major gaps exist; present the findings and, if needed, draft a contrarian paper clearly labelled as an exercise. Team A/Team B is used when TWO equally strong positions coexist: each side writes out its full argument, with assumptions and data in plain view, and the decision-maker judges which is stronger. It is costly, so it is kept for long-running disputes or far-reaching decisions; analysts are sometimes made to argue the position they do not hold, to expose their own mind-set. The traps: a challenger with no real mandate who merely performs, and an unlabelled contrarian product the reader mistakes for the official view. Reaffirming the original line, with more confidence, is also a valid outcome.
Choosing between the two techniques starts with a simple question: how many strong explanations actually exist? If everyone believes the same thing, you don't need two equal teams, just one voice trying to break the consensus. If the office is split into two camps, a structured face-off becomes useful. Say your firm has believed for years that a certain type of client leaves only because of price. A devil's advocate would check whether those departures actually track price changes, or something else. But if half the team says "price" and half says "the support relationship," then each camp should write out its full case, with data on the table. The next question is what you do with the result once the exercise is over.
Why it matters A consensus years old quietly filters out contrary evidence; without a mandated challenger, nobody checks the assumptions it rests on any more.