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Hindsight bias makes the past look predictable because, once you know the ending, every earlier detail lines up behind it. The signs that pointed elsewhere fade, and the ones that fit the result look as though they were there all along. The easiest position to hold is the expert after the event, because all it asks of you is a result.
Neal Roese and Kathleen Vohs describe hindsight bias working at three levels, from misremembering what you said, through believing the outcome was inevitable, to believing you personally could have foreseen it. In your own decisions, that third level is the one to watch, because it turns a result into a verdict on whoever didn't see it coming.
It shows up most in the review, where the result is already on the table. Someone names the cause with confidence, the room agrees because it fits what happened, and nobody asks what was actually known on the day the call was made.
The defence is a record made before the result: a forecast, a note of what you expected, or an entry in a decision journal. Memory edits itself to fit the outcome, but a note written on the day can't, and it lets you judge the decision on what you knew when you made it.
The second defence works in the room. Before anyone agrees the cause, ask what else could explain the same result: arguing for an alternative weakens the feeling that the outcome was always coming.
In 2001, our supply deal for the Ideal Home Exhibition used up a month's forecast in a week, and our operations manager, Bert, said, "I knew this would happen." Claire, a former employee, had won a stand at the London show, and we'd agreed to supply it from her forecast: half the stock up front, the rest as top-ups over four weeks. Her order at the end of the first week took everything the forecast had left.
Bert had sat through the leadership meeting that approved the deal without saying a word about the forecast. When I pointed that out, it turned into an argument: to Bert, the shortfall had been obvious all along.