devil's advocate

/dˈɛvəlz ˈadvəkˌeɪt/

/dˈɛvəlz ˈædvəkˌeɪt/

[phrase]

devil's advocate

[PHRASE]

a person who pretends to disagree with an opinion or idea just to promote a discussion concerning a particular subject

Examples

1. So we've been trying to use that to help us, and one of the things that we think that helps protect you against behavioral biases is to have a devil's advocate.

2. So I think the devil's advocate's been a big improvement, it's created better dialog, better discussion for us to challenge each other in our weekly portfolio management meetings.

3. You can be guaranteed that if they're doing a political poll, they're going to have a pair of conservative oriented eyes on it and a pair of liberal oriented on it, because you need people playing devil's advocate.

4. Now Christine you said you think she's playing devil's advocate in this clip?