Distinguishing Between Intention and Competence

Why Good People Fail and Skilled People Harm

A surgeon with steady hands and decades of experience can still kill a patient if he operates while drunk. A well-meaning volunteer with zero training can accidentally poison an entire village with contaminated water. One has perfect competence but toxic intention. The other has pure intention but zero competence. Both cause harm. Understanding the difference—and why both matter equally—is crucial in medicine, leadership, parenting, investing, and every area where trust is on the line.

Here’s a clear breakdown with real-world examples across professions and life.

Scenario	High Intention + High Competence	High Intention + Low Competence	Low Intention + High Competence	Low Intention + Low Competence
Doctor prescribing medication	Carefully selects the right drug and dosage after thorough diagnosis	Prescribes what they genuinely believe is best, but miscalculates dosage (e.g., Flint water engineers thinking cost-cutting would be fine)	Intentionally overprescribes opioids for profit while knowing the risk	Sells fake cancer cures knowingly and has no medical training
Financial advisor managing your money	Builds a diversified portfolio tailored to your goals and risk tolerance	Recommends “safe” investments they don’t fully understand, causing losses	Actively steers you into high-commission products that benefit them	Runs a Ponzi scheme and can’t even balance their own checkbook
Parent teaching a child to drive	Patiently explains rules, practices in empty lots, stays calm	Tries to help but panics and grabs the wheel at the wrong moment	Teaches reckless speeding because “it’s cool” despite knowing how to drive safely	Hands the keys to a 12-year-old after drinking
CEO leading a company through crisis	Makes tough but transparent layoffs with generous severance and clear reasoning	Announces “everything will be fine” with no actual recovery plan	Deliberately hides financial rot to cash out stock options	Has no clue what the company even does and is only in it for the title
Teacher grading exams	Grades fairly and offers extra help to struggling students	Wants every child to pass so badly they inflate grades, harming future learning	Gives top marks only to students who flatter them	Doesn’t read the papers and assigns random scores
AI engineer deploying a model	Rigorously tests for bias and failure modes before release	Releases a “helpful” chatbot that accidentally gives deadly medical advice	Intentionally adds hidden backdoors for surveillance	Copies code from Stack Overflow without understanding it

The Four Quadrants Explained

1. High Intention + High Competence → The ideal. Trustworthy, effective, admirable.
   Example: A whistleblower who risks their career with airtight evidence.
2. High Intention + Low Competence → Often forgiven once, but dangerous at scale.
   These are the “road to hell is paved with good intentions” cases. Harm is accidental but real.
   Real example: Many COVID-era DIY mask makers who used vacuum cleaner bags (which released lung-damaging fibers) because they genuinely wanted to help.
3. Low Intention + High Competence → Especially corrosive because the harm is deliberate and executed flawlessly.
   These are your skilled fraudsters, insider traders, and corrupt geniuses.
   Example: Bernie Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history not because he was incompetent—he was terrifyingly competent—but because his intention was pure greed.
4. Low Intention + Low Competence → Usually collapses quickly and does limited damage.
   Think of the teenager who tries to scam elderly people on Craigslist but can’t even spell “PayPal.”

Why Competence Without Intention Is Still Dangerous

A highly skilled person who doesn’t care about outcomes will optimize for the wrong thing—usually personal gain.

• Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes understood lab technology just well enough to fake results convincingly.
• Many “evil genius” hackers cause massive damage precisely because they know exactly what they’re doing.

Why Intention Without Competence Still Hurts People

Good intentions are emotionally comforting but practically useless (sometimes lethal) without skill.

• The Oprah-backed “The Secret” style of positive thinking applied to medicine has led people to die rejecting chemotherapy.
• Well-meaning but untrained aid workers have sparked cholera outbreaks by building latrines uphill from water sources.

How to Assess Both in Real Life

When hiring, dating, electing, or trusting anyone, ask two separate questions:

1. Intention check

• Do their incentives align with my well-being?
• Have they sacrificed personal gain for ethics in the past?
• Are they transparent when they benefit?

1. Competence check

• Do they have verifiable results in similar situations?
• Do they admit what they don’t know?
• Do experts in the field respect them?

Never let warm feelings about intention override cold evidence of incompetence.
Never let impressive credentials blind you to rotten motives.

Key Takeaways

• Good intentions do not excuse bad outcomes caused by lack of skill.
• High skill does not redeem deliberately harmful motives.
• The only combination that consistently produces good in the world is high intention paired with high competence.
• Forgive the well-meaning beginner once — but don’t put them in charge of brain surgery.
• Fear the polished expert who has stopped caring about anyone but themselves.

In the end, judge people by both dimensions at once.
Because a kind fool and a brilliant villain can both destroy you—just in different ways.