Sense with Cents

A trusted mentor shared something with me years ago that has never left: we are either learning or declining. There is no static experience, no plateau where knowledge simply holds. At the time, I was transitioning into the lead trainer role for our umpire association — a large area group, baseball officiating, a long story for another day. That one sentence changed how I approached not just that role, but everything since.

The lessons from baseball umpiring have stayed with me and my sons to this day, more than a decade after we all stepped off the field for the last time. Officiating teaches you something most professions don’t demand: the ability to make a decision in an instant, often with only partial information, knowing that roughly half the people watching will disagree with you regardless. You learn quickly the goal is not to please everyone — it is to get it right, to be consistent, and to keep learning from the ones you got wrong.

My first section championship game brought that lesson home. My sons were watching. A controversial play unfolded — one only I was positioned to see and call. In the moment, the training kicked in and the call was easy. What followed was anything but — a full rhubarb, the kind that gets reviewed on video. As best anyone could determine, I got it right. But we reviewed that play for weeks in training sessions, and at home too, and I came away with techniques I could have used to better manage the situation. Being correct and having nothing to learn are not the same thing. That lesson served me well later when I had to remove a coach from a big game — which carries an automatic suspension from their next game. You don’t get there without having handled the smaller fires first.

I still have a photo from that championship game. Spiffy in my gear — except for the padded cast on my right hand from a catcher’s mistake a few weeks earlier. I learned to listen when a player says it is their first time catching in a game, and it is possible for a right-handed person to use a mouse with their left hand.

I also learned there was a specific rule for all participants on the field regarding the padding of casts — one I was already complying with. The coach in the first base dugout questioned me about it, able to see the cast clearly with every strike call I made. I was able to recite the rule verbatim.

There is an interesting postscript to my umpiring days. At my recent jury duty, the judge asked jurors about their hobbies and outside interests. When I mentioned my years as a baseball umpire, I suspect that sealed my place on the panel. Someone trained to make instant decisions from partial information, under pressure, with half the room disagreeing — apparently that reads as impartial.

The idea is simple but uncomfortable. Most of us like to believe we have arrived at some level of competence, that experience alone is enough to carry us. It isn’t. Experience without continued learning becomes habit, and habit eventually becomes error. The world changes. Rules change. Best practices evolve. The person who stopped learning five years ago is operating on five-year-old knowledge — and often doesn’t know it.

I’ve seen this in payroll more times than I can count. The employer who learned payroll in 1995 and never updated their understanding. The bookkeeper who handles things a certain way because that’s how they’ve always done it. The software that hasn’t kept pace with tax law changes — or worse, the software that hasn’t been updated in so long there is no longer a recovery path when something goes wrong. See The Cost of “If It Ain’t Broke” for a real-world example. In each case, the decline happened quietly, without anyone announcing it.

Part of continual learning is understanding and accepting that your existing knowledge could be incorrect. This is arguably the hardest part — seeing your own error, or truly listening when someone else points one out. It requires setting aside ego, resisting the urge to defend what you already believe, and being willing to start over on something you thought you had right. In my experience, the people who do this well are the ones who continue to grow. The ones who can’t are already declining, whether they know it or not.

The flip side is equally true. Staying curious — genuinely open to being wrong, willing to admit an error, ready to change course when the evidence calls for it — is itself a form of expertise. It keeps the knowledge alive. I’ve always believed admitting a mistake publicly costs nothing and earns everything. It shows you’re paying attention. It shows you’re still learning.

Currently, with AI tools becoming essential to use well, I find myself relearning how to ask questions — and how to question the answers given. The tool is only as good as the person using it, and using it well requires the same discipline as any other skill: stay curious, verify what you’re told, and never stop refining your approach.

So when you read something here, or receive a message from me, I hope there is something useful in it beyond the immediate situation at hand. Teaching and sharing, to me, are forms of learning. You cannot explain something well without understanding it more deeply yourself. That is reason enough to keep writing, keep sharing, and keep asking questions. The moment I stop, the decline begins.