The 7 steps of critical thinking are: identify the problem, gather information, evaluate the evidence, identify alternatives, check other viewpoints and your own bias, draw a conclusion, and reflect on the process. Every four, five, six or seven-step list online descends from John Dewey's five phases of reflective thought in How We Think (1910), which is why the count varies and the structure does not. Peter Facione's IDEAS process (2023 update) is the modern five-step form and the source of the last step, self-correction. This piece turns each step into the question it answers, states what should be on paper when the step is done, and runs one ordinary decision, a job offer, through all seven. The two steps most people skip are the first and the last: they arrive with the problem unnamed and never go back to check the reasoning. Dewey's line covers both: the essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment.
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The 7 steps of critical thinking are: identify the problem, gather information, evaluate the evidence, identify alternatives, check other viewpoints and your own bias, draw a conclusion, and reflect on the process. Every list you will find online is a version of this one. What none of them says is how to tell when a step is actually done.
That is the gap this piece fills. You probably have something in front of you right now, a decision or a plan that will not settle, and "think it through" is not an instruction you can follow. Below, each step becomes a question you answer in writing, with a test for whether it is finished, and one ordinary decision runs through all seven. We also name the two steps that, in the sessions we watch, almost everyone skips.
What are the 7 steps of critical thinking?
The 7 steps of critical thinking, phrased as the questions they answer, are these:
Identify the problem. What exactly is the difficulty?
Gather information. What do I know, and what do I only believe?
Evaluate the evidence. Which of this would I still trust if it pointed the other way?
Identify alternatives. What else could be true, or be done?
What would someone who disagrees say, and what do I want to be true?
Draw a conclusion. What am I deciding, and what would change my mind?
Reflect on the process. Which step did I rush, and what did I skip?
A list of seven verbs is not a process; it is a table of contents. A process has an output at every step and a way to tell whether the output is real. So each of the 7 steps of critical thinking comes with two more things here: what should be on the page when the step is done, and the sign that it is not. Identify the problem is done when you can write the difficulty in one sentence that does not contain your preferred answer. Gather information is done when you have two columns, known and assumed, and the second one is honest. If you cannot supply the output, the step happened in your head, and a step in your head is a step you cannot check.
Step
The question
On paper when done
1. Identify the problem
What exactly is the difficulty?
One sentence, no answer inside it
2. Gather information
What do I know, and what do I only believe?
Two lists: known, assumed
3. Evaluate the evidence
Which of this would I trust if it pointed the other way?
Each item marked strong, weak, or unknown
4. Identify alternatives
What else could be true, or be done?
At least three options, one of them uncomfortable
5. Check viewpoints and bias
What would a critic say? What do I want to be true?
The critic's best line, and your wish, written out
6. Draw a conclusion
What am I deciding, and what would change my mind?
The decision and its reversal condition
7. Reflect on the process
Which step did I rush?
One honest line, dated
Where do the 7 steps come from, and why does every list differ?
Every version of the steps of critical thinking, whether it has four, five, six or seven, descends from one passage in John Dewey's How We Think (1910). Dewey looked at three ordinary acts of thinking (choosing a route across town, working out what a pole on a ferry is for, explaining why soap bubbles move) and found in each "five logically distinct steps: (i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection".1 He also noted that the first two steps "frequently fuse into one", which is why some lists count five and others count four.
The modern lists add steps by splitting Dewey's. Gather information and evaluate the evidence are his second step cut in two. Identify alternatives is his third, with his advice that "cultivation of a variety of alternative suggestions is an important factor in good thinking" promoted to a step of its own. Viewpoints and bias are the same move seen from two angles.
The seventh step, reflect, came later. Peter Facione's IDEAS process, in the 2023 update of his Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts, has 5 critical thinking steps: identify the problem and set priorities, determine relevant information, enumerate options and anticipate consequences, assess the situation and make a preliminary decision, scrutinize the process and self-correct as needed.2 That last one is where the 7 steps of critical thinking get their "reflect".
So the number is a matter of how finely you cut. The structure is not. Name the difficulty, look, guess, reason out the guess, test it. Our post on reasoning critically, in Dewey's order walks the same structure as a habit rather than a checklist.
How do you actually do each step?
One example runs through all seven: you have a job offer from a smaller company, more money and more risk, and you have to answer by Friday.
Step 1: Identify the problem
Write one sentence beginning "The difficulty is that..." and stop. Dewey put more weight here than on any other step: "The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution."1 Where the difficulty is not located, suggestions for solving it "must be more or less random".
Done when the sentence names a tension, not an option. "The difficulty is that I want the money and I do not trust the company" is a problem. "The difficulty is whether to take the job" is a menu.
Step 2: Gather information
Make two lists: what you know, and what you only believe. Be strict about the line between them. Salary, start date, notice period: known. "The company will be around in three years", "my current manager will be angry", "I will be bored if I stay": assumed.
Done when the assumed list is longer than you expected. It usually is. If it is empty, you have written your beliefs into the known column.
Step 3: Evaluate the evidence
For each item, ask whether you would still trust it if it pointed the other way. The revenue figure the founder mentioned in the interview: would you trust it if it were bad news? If not, it is weak in both directions. Mark each item strong, weak, or unknown. We have shown critical thinking with worked examples of this move in six settings.
Done when you can name the single piece of evidence your current leaning depends on most, and how strong it is.
Step 4: Identify alternatives
List at least three options, and make one of them uncomfortable. Take the job; stay; stay and ask for a change; take the job with a shorter notice period; ask for a month to decide. Dewey's reason for this step is plain: suspended belief "depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures".1 Without a rival, the first suggestion wins by default.
Done when the list holds an option you had not considered before you started writing.
Step 5: Check other viewpoints and your own bias
Write the best sentence a critic would say about your current leaning. Not a weak one; the best one. Then write what you want to be true. "I want the offer to be good because I am tired of my job" is a legitimate line, and it belongs on the page.
Done when the critic's line makes you slightly uncomfortable and your wish is written in plain words.
Step 6: Draw a conclusion
Write the decision and the condition that would reverse it. "I will take the job, unless the reference call with a former employee contradicts what the founder told me about runway." A conclusion without a reversal condition is a wish with a date on it. In a session, Decision mode asks for exactly these two lines and does not move on until both exist.
Done when someone else could read your sentence and know what would change your mind.
Step 7: Reflect on the process
Go back over steps 1 to 6 and write one honest line about which step you rushed. Facione calls this self-regulation: monitoring your own thinking "with a view toward questioning, confirming, validating, or correcting either one's reasoning or one's results".2 It is the recursive step; it applies to everything above it, including itself. Gary Klein's premortem (2007) is this step done before the decision lands: assume the choice has already failed, and write the reasons.3 A session receipt exists for the same purpose: you cannot scrutinize what you did not record.
Done when the line is specific. "I rushed step 1" is not it. "I wrote the problem as 'whether to take the job' twice before I admitted the money was the issue" is.
Which steps do people skip?
The first and the last of the 7 steps of critical thinking. In sessions we watch people arrive at step 4 with a shortlist already drawn up, an answer already circled, and the difficulty never written down. When the question "what exactly is the problem" comes up, the first answer is nearly always the option they prefer, disguised as a problem. Dewey describes the same thing in a doctor who lets a first diagnosis "take possession prematurely of his mind"; his thinking is "by that much cut short".1 The practitioner's skill, Dewey says, is to hold off the first suggestion until the trouble has been explored.
The last step is skipped for a different reason. By the time the decision is made, the person is relieved, and going back over the reasoning feels like reopening it. So the reasoning is never checked, and the next decision starts from the same habits.
A step you did in your head is a step you cannot check.
This is why we built Inwitt AI as an AI thinking partner app that asks rather than answers. It puts one question in front of you at a time, in this order, and the thinking board carries only what you confirmed, so a skipped step shows up as an empty space rather than a vague feeling. The thinking stays yours; the mechanism only makes the gaps visible.
What only feels like following the steps
Gathering as a way to postpone deciding. Step 2 has no natural end, which makes it the most comfortable place to stay. Dewey's rule is that the trained mind judges "how far each of these steps needs to be carried", and that taking too much pains in one case is as foolish as taking too little in another.1 If the assumed list has not changed in a week, you are at step 6 and pretending otherwise.
A pros-and-cons list that starts at step 4. Two columns under "take the job" look like analysis. They are the alternatives step, done for one alternative, with the problem unnamed and the evidence unweighed. The list feels rigorous because it is tidy.
Treating step 7 as "communicate". Several versions of the steps of the critical thinking process end with "present your findings". Telling someone your conclusion is not scrutinizing it. Facione's fifth step is scrutinize and self-correct, and the honest question there is his: "Have I missed anything important?"2
Asking a chatbot to run the 7 steps of critical thinking for you. It will produce seven tidy paragraphs, and every one of them will be its output, not yours. The step is the work of writing the sentence, and a sentence you did not build is one you will not follow. Our post on what improves critical thinking covers why the writing cannot be delegated.
Questions people ask about the critical thinking steps
What is the first step in critical thinking?
Identify the problem: write the difficulty in one sentence that does not contain your preferred answer. Dewey (1910) treated locating the difficulty as the step that separates "safeguarded critical inference" from "uncontrolled thinking".1 Every later step inherits what you wrote here.
Are there 5 critical thinking steps or 7?
Both, and they are the same process cut differently. Dewey's original had five, with the first two often merging. Facione's IDEAS has five. The seven-step versions split gather from evaluate and alternatives from viewpoints. Pick the count that helps you notice a skipped step.
Do the steps have to be done in order?
Roughly, with one loop. Steps 2 through 5 often circle: a new alternative sends you back to gather more. What should not move is the first step, which comes before any option is considered, and the last, which comes after the decision rather than instead of it.
How long should the critical thinking process take?
As long as the decision is worth and no longer. Dewey's answer was that "no cast-iron rules can be laid down": a prompt conclusion can beat a delayed one in some cases, and in others a decision "may have to be postponed for a long period".1 If writing seven honest lines takes you twenty minutes, most decisions do not deserve a week.
The 7 steps of critical thinking are only a list until each one has a sentence under it that you wrote. That is what a session is for: one question at a time, in this order, with a receipt at the end so step 7 has something to look at. If you have a decision waiting, join the Inwitt waitlist and bring it.
