So many accidents start out with the wrong objective that it's pretty easy to consider the choice of objective as one of the most critical decisions, partner choice probably being second. Poor choice of objective and partners often leads to circumstances that beg for bad decisions. If you ever find yourself in a situation where your uncertainty is high, regardless of the reasons, just make conservative decisions and you'll never go wrong. This doesn't do very much to protect against the aforementioned black swans, but it will keep you out of serious trouble nearly all the time.
