Psychological tests are among the most pernicious tools available to lazy managers, because they substitute abstract scores for actual knowledge of the individual Dear Bob …How would you like to look into a crystal ball to figure out who are the rising stars in your company, without your personal feelings getting in the way? Who are the employees, odds are, you will lose when the economy starts getting better, and which ones should be let go?[ Also on InfoWorld, Bob Lewis shares some wisdom on exercising your workplace expertise in “Managing an employee who is not ‘executive material’” | Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld’s Advice Line newsletter. ] An HR software company, [NAME REDACTED – Bob] has developed a software program that eliminates the guess work and makes the decision to retain or terminate employees a lot easier to manage.I can arrange an interview to discuss.– PR Guy Dear PR Guy … I don’t think so. I can look into my crystal ball to figure out the results of our discussion, which is, Who do you think you’re kidding?There are psychological tests that can predict which job applicants are more likely to succeed than others, with enough accuracy to be of academic interest. Even the best of them screen out enough good people to make experienced hiring managers nervous. At best, they should be considered one data point among many. But a software program that “eliminates the guess work” (by the way, the word is “guesswork”) and lets managers avoid having their personal feelings “get in the way”?In how many ways is this a bad idea? Let’s count:It encourages managers to dodge responsibility, replacing “in my judgment you aren’t performing well enough” with “don’t blame me — the test says we have to fire you.”It exposes any company dumb enough to buy the claim to (in my view, legitimate) legal liability. Imagine a jury. Now imagine the company trying to defend its decision to terminate an employee not on actual performance, but on test results.It makes firing decisions bloodless. Personal feelings should get in the way, because any manager who finds terminating someone to be easy — unless the termination is due to malfeasance — isn’t the sort of person I want around me. Being a poor performer doesn’t make someone a bad person, and causing pain should cause a manager pain. It’s part of being human.Had you offered a tool to help managers gain a clearer view of employee value and performance, I might have been interested. By overstating your case so extremely, you made my decision easy. And I didn’t even need software to make it.– BobThis story, “A case for the separation of management and software,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Careers