If you ask a business executive, can you manage something without understanding it? Most will say, "no" or "not effectively" and many (having done this a number of times) will cite the aphorism, "you can't manage what you can't measure." Of course, understanding a situation and having metrics that inform you on it it,  quite often do not always equate. Typically metrics are a necessary but not really sufficient part of the understanding. Understanding comes from inter-relating and processing the metrics in a meaningful way- thought, discussion, etc… are usually involved.

Of course, there's another saying, "paralysis by analysis" which is a common affliction but I think if you look at these situations, most of the time, this occurs when there are metrics but those metrics are nebulous, incomplete and even unreliable. There is also a small but significant percentage of the population who, due to risk averse behavior, decision style, personality type…, do this no matter what but we're going to ignore this mental condition for this argument. 

So let's consider a key decision like who to hire for a specific position. What is the cost of Understanding so that you can pick the best, most suitable person?

You have the cost of checking or research including reading resumes, doing a background check, processing assessment results, interviewing...

You have the administrative costs for managing the recruiting process

You have the opportunity cost, the things you and employees could be doing when this is being done.

You have the effort of sharing and processing information as well as gaining consensus.  

And if you make a bad decision, you have the costs of that failure.  This is a cost backed up by studies that is accurately estimated. 

The key issue is what can you invest in that lowers the overall total cost of all of these?