Know Thyself: Critically Examining Your Budget

For individuals, self-skepticism is about critically examining beliefs, methods, and assumptions, and being open to change. Individuals benefit from introspective questioning, and so can a government's budget—spending that no longer serves the community should be examined and replaced with better options. As GFOA's Rethinking Budgeting initiative points out, traditional budgeting tends to be less reflective. Incremental budgeting is guided by historical precedent, taking last year’s spending largely as a given. Governments cannot go to the other extreme, where everything is questioned constantly; this would quickly lead to burnout and acrimony among staff. This session will outline how finance professionals can apply different dimensions of self-skepticism to ensure limited resources are allocated in ways that best serve the community.