Pros and Cons List: The Classic Decision Framework Explained

When you're stuck between two job offers, weighing a major business investment, or trying to decide whether to launch a new product line, your mind can feel like a battlefield of competing thoughts. One moment you're leaning one way, the next you're convinced of the opposite. This mental ping-pong isn't just frustrating—it's a sign you need a decision framework.

Enter the pros and cons list: perhaps the oldest and most intuitive decision-making tool in existence. While 74% of companies confess they struggle to execute their strategy effectively, often the problem starts with unclear decision-making processes. The humble pros and cons list offers a deceptively simple solution that's been helping people make better choices for over 250 years.

The Benjamin Franklin Origin Story

The pros and cons list has an impressive pedigree. In a 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley, Benjamin Franklin described his own use of the method, which is now often called the Ben Franklin method. Franklin's approach was elegantly simple yet remarkably sophisticated for its time.

Franklin would divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns, writing "Pro" over one and "Con" over the other, then during three or four days' consideration, put down short hints of the different motives for or against the measure, estimating their respective weights and striking out equal items from both sides. This weighing and elimination process helped him see where the true balance lay.

What made Franklin's method revolutionary wasn't just listing factors—it was the deliberate process of reflection, weighting, and systematic comparison. This framework transformed decision-making from an emotional reaction into a structured analysis.

Why Pros and Cons Lists Actually Work

There's solid reasoning behind why this simple framework remains relevant in our data-driven age. Weighing up pros and cons can speed up the decision-making process, improve your understanding of the situation, and help you avoid decision-making paralysis.

The psychological benefit is significant. Using a simple "pros" and "cons" list encourages you to approach your decision objectively, without letting your "gut feeling" impact your choice, and this method is particularly useful in group decision making, when team members favor a certain idea, encouraging each person to consider other perspectives.

Modern research on decision-making supports Franklin's intuition. People differ widely in how much they rely on environmental cues when making decisions—some individuals depend heavily on surrounding visuals and sounds to guide their choices, while others rely on them far less. The pros and cons framework helps externalize these internal processes, making them visible and manageable.

When to Use (and When to Skip) This Framework

Not every decision deserves a full pros and cons analysis. Evaluating pros and cons is useful for making quick, non-critical, go/no-go decisions. Think of it as your go-to tool for binary choices: Should we hire this candidate? Should I accept this partnership offer? Should we expand into this market?

However, when you have to compare many different options, or explore some choices in greater depth, decision-making tools such as Decision Matrix Analysis or Decision Tree Analysis may be more appropriate. If you're evaluating five different software vendors or comparing multiple strategic directions, you'll need something more robust.

The framework also has its critics. Experts on decision support systems have warned that the Ben Franklin method is only appropriate for very informal decision making, citing "a poverty of imagination and lack of background knowledge required to generate a full enough range and detail of competing considerations". In other words, if you don't know what you don't know, your list will reflect those blind spots.

How to Create an Effective Pros and Cons List

Creating a basic pros and cons list is straightforward, but doing it well requires discipline. Here's a practical approach that goes beyond simply jotting down thoughts:

Step 1: Define Your Decision Clearly

Write out the specific decision you're making in one clear sentence at the top of your page. "Should we invest in expanding our team?" is better than vaguely thinking about "growth options." Clarity here prevents scope creep as you evaluate.

Step 2: Take Your Time

Franklin spent three or four days with his lists, and there's wisdom in that patience. It can be useful to set a time limit for this process during group decision making—this encourages people to brainstorm issues without over-analyzing details. For individual decisions, however, sleeping on it helps surface considerations you might initially miss.

Step 3: Assign Weights to Each Factor

Not all pros and cons are created equal. A major financial benefit should carry more weight than a minor convenience. Consider rating each item on a scale of 1-10 for importance, then another rating for probability. A huge benefit that's unlikely to materialize deserves less weight than a modest but certain advantage.

Step 4: Look for Patterns

Once you've listed everything, step back and analyze. Are your cons mostly short-term while your pros are long-term benefits? Are you seeing a pattern of risk aversion or FOMO (fear of missing out)? These patterns reveal your underlying concerns and values.

Real-World Business Applications

In today's business environment, where successful organizations are 1.6 times more likely to have well-defined business outcomes and strategies, the pros and cons framework serves as a foundational tool for strategic thinking.

Consider a mid-sized software company deciding whether to pivot from B2C to B2B. Their pros might include higher contract values, more predictable revenue, and longer customer lifetimes. The cons could include longer sales cycles, need for different expertise, and risk of alienating existing customers. By systematically listing and weighting these factors, leadership can have more productive discussions grounded in shared understanding rather than competing intuitions.

Creating pros and cons lists is an easy way to reduce uncertainty and promote transparency, building an objective decision-making process unswayed by bias or emotion, while weighing your arguments against each other can provide further evidence against or in favor of a choice.

Combining Frameworks for Better Decisions

The most sophisticated decision-makers don't rely on a single framework. They combine tools strategically. You might start with a pros and cons list to narrow options from five to two, then use a decision matrix to make your final choice. Or conduct a SWOT analysis to understand your strategic position before creating your pros and cons list.

According to a McKinsey study, 70% of leaders believe real-time data enhances decision-making. This suggests that while qualitative frameworks like pros and cons lists remain valuable, they work best when informed by solid data and combined with other analytical approaches.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

The biggest mistake people make with pros and cons lists is treating them as purely mechanical exercises. If you've already made up your mind, you'll unconsciously bias your list to support that conclusion. Be honest about this tendency.

Another pitfall: confusing activity with insight. Simply having more items on one side doesn't automatically make that the better choice. Three minor pros don't outweigh one deal-breaking con. This is why weighting matters.

Finally, don't let the framework replace critical thinking. Remember, always use your common sense—if you suspect that the solution isn't appropriate, take some time to identify any factors you may have missed.

Making the Framework Work for You

The beauty of the pros and cons list lies in its adaptability. You can use it solo during quiet reflection or collaboratively with your team on a whiteboard. You can keep it simple with two columns, or enhance it with numerical ratings, probability assessments, and stakeholder perspectives.

What matters most isn't the sophistication of your format—it's the discipline of your process. By forcing yourself to articulate both sides of a decision, consider multiple factors systematically, and make your reasoning visible, you transform fuzzy thinking into clear analysis.

In an era of analysis paralysis and information overload, the 250-year-old pros and cons list remains remarkably effective. It won't make every decision for you, but it will help you make better decisions—and do so with greater confidence and clarity. That's a framework worth keeping in your decision-making toolkit.