One part is knowing how important correctness actually is in your case. A lot of people on HN are perfectionists, and there's a lot of rhetoric going around our industry about avoiding errors and not breaking things; in reality business processes have always had to be error tolerant (because until recently they were always done by humans) and a quick solution that breaks sometimes is often more valuable than a slow solution that doesn't break.
Another piece is pervasive auditability. Any result should come with an explanation of where it came from; "Bob did some calculations in his head and he reckons the answer is 7" would be acceptable for some kinds of business decisions, while for others it needs to be more like "Bob followed the procedure specified in the XZY institute handbook, page 456". Somehow we've let all that go out the window, partly because people who don't understand computing are managing organisations that deeply depend on it. But you don't even really need computer literacy; what you do need is the same kind of scepticism that you'd apply to any other piece of work.
Managers need to manage. Some of the problem is just people lacking the necessary skills (and a lot of that goes all the way to the top: the UK government doesn't have the wherewithal to hire skilled computer professionals because at every level the people on top don't have the skills to assess whether the people below them are any good), but a lot is a misplaced perception of computers as infallible.
Another piece is pervasive auditability. Any result should come with an explanation of where it came from; "Bob did some calculations in his head and he reckons the answer is 7" would be acceptable for some kinds of business decisions, while for others it needs to be more like "Bob followed the procedure specified in the XZY institute handbook, page 456". Somehow we've let all that go out the window, partly because people who don't understand computing are managing organisations that deeply depend on it. But you don't even really need computer literacy; what you do need is the same kind of scepticism that you'd apply to any other piece of work.
Managers need to manage. Some of the problem is just people lacking the necessary skills (and a lot of that goes all the way to the top: the UK government doesn't have the wherewithal to hire skilled computer professionals because at every level the people on top don't have the skills to assess whether the people below them are any good), but a lot is a misplaced perception of computers as infallible.