While the above is a useful working description of CT, it is important to consider each of the specified CT abilities carefully and in-depth. CT is multi-dimensional and not something that we can automatically assume that we fully understand, teach clearly, or measure definitively. Moreover, we can not even assume that it is clearly understood by our students or faculty as a learning outcome (and thus perceptual measures collected from current students and/or alumni are not definitive).

The first CT skill stated above, the ability to "identify" arguments or "problems," is instructive of the need to think deeply about this construct. Consider that "problem identification" abilities such as defining a decision "space" or problem "context" are rarely taught or tested for in our educational systems especially K-14. For example, students are typically tested throughout their educational careers on how well they are able to solve already structured problems. Life and decision contexts are formatted for them. Rarely are students put into situations or taught cognitive skills that enable them to formulate or structure a problem context from the largely ambiguous and amorphous information that they confront in life or in the increasingly entrepreneurial business world. Case analysis and some, although not all, projects are limited exceptions. But students typically are not presented with the latter methodologies until long after their cognitive habits are formed. And even when these methodologies are used in the classroom their application by professors is often uneven.

What is clear, is that strategic opportunity, whether in life or business emanates from this ability and separates successful entrepreneurs from pretenders. Individuals with problem structuring as well as solving skills are equipped to succeed and lead. They can identify key inflection or change points and use them to organize environmental information and predict future change and opportunity. Thus, initially, CT requires the ability to structure ambiguous information and data into a form of knowledge that can be further analyzed.

While analytical skills are externally seen as abilities to identify and thoroughly examine a problem context, they should also be viewed as having an internal dimension where the individuals maintain an overt awareness of their own thought processes. For instance, when reading a "case" or examining a problem, individuals tacitly make inferences about problem causality or solution. In every day life, we do not consciously analyze our inferences but typically use them as outcomes and move on. With CT however, the inferential process is part of the analysis. Inferences are recognized and treated as hypotheses to be mentally or otherwise tested rather than outcomes to be acted on. For instance, in CT the inferred causal factor treated as an hypothesis might hypothetically be held "neutral" or at least temporarily "held constant" in a mental experiment. This cognitive (and sometimes affective process) of "de-masking" allows other perhaps hidden factors to be seen and analyzed for causality or effect.

What is clear is that CT abilities are about the analytical process of problem framing and analysis through problem solution. This requires students to think in a rigorous and systematic manner: Are arguments balanced and tested by counter arguments? Is "negative case analysis" used to test strong inference? Is ambiguity recognized and framed by cogent and tested assumptions? Are assumptions logical and valued? Is knowledge integrated and compared across disciplines or other theoretical and perhaps competing explanations? Is data and information seen as a source of knowledge, or is it confused for knowledge itself? Is knowledge created from data/information accurately derived from sound CT processes that use intellectual standards such as accuracy, evidentiary support, clarity, logic and an open mind? Is it tested?