The potential negatives of working with an untested director in the big-budget league were obvious.

A G.M. spokesman, Tom Wilkinson, said that the company always considered the potential negatives of a marketing strategy but that effective advertising was often controversial.

But it is impossible to know what will happen until the war actually begins, and investors hate uncertainty even more than they fear the potential negatives, Mr. Hirschhorn said.

Mr. Trout at Trout & Ries said he believed efforts to address the potential negatives raised by "Quiz Show" were a good idea.

"But you have to examine the potential negatives while they are still potential," he said.

So now that we've agreed on the potential negatives for Erewhon, where's this 'big opportunity'?

"That public good outweighs potential negatives that may exist."

It's like getting the first of two expensive tests (with potential false negatives) for a disease you may or may not have.

In addition to emphasizing the positives, be prepared to soothe worries about potential negatives.

"By working together they found a way to ameliorate the potential negatives and to show the benefits such a project has, which is to provide stable senior citizen housing for people in the community," Mr. Weinstock said.