Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

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Disaster! Dirty Data, Data Misinterpretation, and Nonsensical Actions

Weak data integrity and poor data literacy quietly wreck good decisions
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 3 050 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.

I have a peculiar relationship with messy data. On one hand, it can drive me mad – there are times when I explode like a volcano after realising that decisions were made incorrectly because of it. Especially when it’s been going on for a long time and has had a significant negative impact. And particularly when I realise that I could have identified the issue much earlier. On the other hand, resolving such situations pulls me into a state of flow – a state where I immerse myself deeply into the problem and shut out the outside world.

I’ve realised that I’d probably be bored in a place where everything is perfectly organised, all information is accurate, everyone knows precisely what the data tells us, and everyone can place it into the broader context of the organisation.

One example of such a place is an overly simple organism. In the past, when I was approached with a job offer from one of the most renowned Slovak e-commerce projects, I wasn’t interested in changing jobs. But at the same time, I asked myself: what could I significantly contribute there? It’s just too simple a business – they buy and sell, buy and sell. It didn’t excite me at all. I saw no intellectual adventure in it, no opportunity to dive into entirely new situations and learn something new while solving them.

My place is elsewhere – in the jungle. Somewhere that at first glance seems chaotic and impossible to navigate. A place where most people only know their specific area of expertise. And that’s when the work becomes enjoyable for me. That’s when half a day flies by like half an hour.

This “jungle” can look very different depending on the situation. I don’t want to go into specifics; I’ll keep it general, though I realise that might make it less clear for the reader. It starts with it being one of those more complex organisms. And in such an organism, you might encounter four types of challenges related to working with information and the disasters that can arise from them. Many of these disasters begin with one confusion: mistaking correlation vs causation, reading a cause into data that only shows two things moving together.

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Summary

Messy data, misinterpretation, nonsensical actions. Most people avoid this chaos. I thrive in it. The paradox: frustrated by bad data, deeply engaged when resolving it.

Common questions on this article's topic

What are the main types of data quality problems in organisations?
In the article, four distinct challenges are identified from practical experience. First, decision-makers not working with the data they should be using. Second, inaccurate numbers, errors in collection or calculations. Third, accurate data that tells something different from what people assume it tells. Fourth, correct data that is not placed into the broader context of a complex system. The third and fourth are the most dangerous because they create a false sense of confidence.
Why is data misinterpretation more dangerous than missing data?
Because missing data is visible. You know something is absent. Misinterpreted data feels like knowledge while leading to wrong conclusions. In the article, examples are described where an apparent zero in a report did not actually mean zero. Only someone with deep understanding of the system could recognise what the number truly represented. Acting confidently on misunderstood data often produces worse outcomes than acknowledging you lack information.
What does it mean to act on data without context?
It means making decisions based on numbers without understanding the relationships, dependencies, and business logic behind them. In the article, this is identified as the source of the biggest disasters in organisations. A report may be technically accurate, but if the person reading it does not understand how the system works, they may draw conclusions that seem logical but are fundamentally wrong.
How does flow state relate to solving complex data problems?
Flow, the state of complete immersion in a task where time disappears, was described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as occurring when skill level matches challenge difficulty. In the article, messy data environments are described as triggering exactly this state: the complexity is high enough to demand full attention, the feedback is immediate, and the problem is meaningful. Half a day can feel like half an hour when deeply engaged in untangling data chaos.
Why do some people thrive in messy data environments?
In the article, this is explained through preference for intellectual challenge. An overly simple system where everything is perfectly organised offers no opportunity for deep problem-solving. The jungle, a complex organism where most people only know their specific area, is where the most valuable analytical work happens. The ability to navigate chaos and connect information across domains is described as the core skill.
How can organisations reduce the risk of data-driven disasters?
In the article, the advice is to stay vigilant, even when you believe your data is accurate and your team interprets it correctly. In larger organisations, encountering one of the four data challenges is not a possibility but a likelihood. Improving how people work with data, checking assumptions, understanding context, and questioning whether the numbers mean what they appear to mean, is the most practical way to reduce risk.
What is garbage in, garbage out (GIGO)?
Garbage in, garbage out is the principle that the quality of any output depends on the quality of the input. If the data feeding a report, a model, or a decision is flawed, the result will be flawed too, no matter how sophisticated the method. The phrase comes from the early days of computing and remains the clearest way to describe why poor data quality produces wrong conclusions. The article describes exactly this pattern, inaccurate or misread numbers leading confident people to nonsensical actions.
What is dirty data?
Dirty data is data that is inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, duplicated, or outdated, which makes it unreliable for decisions. It is the everyday form of poor data quality. In the article this is called messy data, and it maps onto two of the four challenges, numbers that are simply wrong and numbers that are technically correct but misread. Dirty data is dangerous because it often looks perfectly usable until a decision built on it fails.
What is data literacy and why does it matter?
Data literacy is the ability to read, interpret, question, and act on data within its real context, rather than taking a number at face value. It matters because most data disasters are not caused by missing data but by people misreading data they already have. The third and fourth challenges in the article are pure data literacy, knowing what a figure actually represents and placing it into the context of a complex system before acting on it.
What is the difference between data quality and data integrity?
Data quality is about whether data is fit for use, accurate, complete, relevant, and consistent enough to trust for a given decision. Data integrity is narrower and focuses on data remaining accurate and unaltered throughout its lifecycle, from collection to storage to reporting. Poor data integrity, for example an error introduced during collection or calculation, is one common source of poor data quality. The second challenge in the article, inaccurate numbers in reports and dashboards, is a data integrity failure.
What is data governance?
Data governance is the set of rules, roles, and standards an organisation uses to keep its data accurate, consistent, and well understood across every team. Good governance is what prevents the four challenges described in the article. It ensures the right people work with the right data, that numbers are collected correctly, and that everyone interprets them the same way. Without it, the discovery of a costly data error depends on luck rather than on process.
What is data interpretation and why does it go wrong?
Data interpretation is the step of turning raw numbers into meaning, deciding what a figure represents, which relationships matter, and what action it justifies. It goes wrong when someone reads a number without its context, for example treating an apparent zero as a real zero when the system actually hides or filters those records. The article calls this the most dangerous failure, because interpreted data feels like knowledge even when the conclusion is wrong.
Why do data driven decisions still go wrong?
Data driven decisions go wrong when the data underneath them is inaccurate, incomplete, or misread, or when nobody understands the wider system the numbers describe. Being data driven is only an advantage when the data is trustworthy and correctly understood. The warning in the article is that the greatest disasters happen precisely when a team is confident it has good numbers and interprets them well, and stops questioning either assumption.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

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