Finance professionals get about as excited as finance professionals can get when they consider the potential that is supposedly inherent in new Web-based technologies that allow people to interact in ways never before possible. If managers across the company communicate more, the thinking goes, then budgeting, planning, and forecasting will improve dramatically as a direct result.

The average person is slightly familiar with the bilateral applications that promise to make all this possible because such technologies are behind networking phenomena such as LinkedIn, which allows strangers to solicit you to buy insurance, and Wikipedia, the “people's encyclopedia” that relies on scrupulous vetting by thousands of people to provide information that is often somewhat correct. Networking technology is also highlighted on the popular television show “Dateline NBC: To Catch a Predator,” where bilateral Web-based communication leads to unilateral collaboration between police and TV to arrest technology-enabled but decision-making-challenged perverts.

I have been giving a lot of thought to these technologies, and I recently stumbled onto the essential dilemma that decision-makers must confront when considering whether to use technology to put more makers in every decision. They face the age-old conflict between one value system, which says inclusion and involvement lead to democratic, open — and, ultimately, better — decisions, and another value system, which says that too many cooks spoil the broth and that a camel is a horse built by a committee of cooks.

Adherents to the former value system point to the so-called “wisdom of crowds.” They believe that large groups of people are smarter, overall, than an elite few, and that a mob is better at solving problems, fostering innovation, making wise choices, and even predicting the future. Adherents to the latter value system believe that a few really smart people really are smarter than a larger collection of dumber people. They see the world as a meritocracy, where the right to make decisions is an earned one, not something to share in a circle with a bunch of touchy-feely egalitarians who can't stop singing “Kumbaya.” If there were such a thing as the “wisdom of crowds,” they argue, how do you explain the fact that the crowds have chosen as the pinnacle of television entertainment “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars”? How do you explain why passionate crowds revere desperate, power-mad sociopaths; endorse their behavior; give them money; and then send them off to spend time with others just like them in Congress?

In the case of finance professionals who are torn between inviting wider involvement into the financial planning process and watching “American Idol,” the problem becomes even more daunting: Who decides who decides? I mean, assuming your company chooses to use Web-based tools to give a crowd the power to collaborate ceaselessly, who has the authority to decide who contributes to the mass wisdom? Is it a fist-pounding, power-mad tyrant who rules by terse edict or a large, diverse committee that spends its first four two-day meetings coming to agreement on what type style to use in e-mails?

I think what makes the most sense is to flip a coin. If it comes up heads, ask the fist-pounding dictator to select a larger group to determine who should be involved in the process. I call this method “the wisdom of the cowed.” If it comes up tails, ask a committee to select one person to select another person to determine who gets to play, and to send their selection to you in an e-mail with an acceptable type style. I call this the “American Idol method.”

Now go off and figure out who gets to decide what kind of coin to flip.

Dan Danbom writes humor for a number of publications. His latest book is "Humor Meets Your Workforce: Make Laughter One of Your Organization's Goals."