In all areas of life, it would do us well to "interpret" events and issues with pure objectivity and reach conclusions based on actual facts, rather than on our preconceived notions.
Towards the beginning of Parashat Miketz we read that Pharaoh summons his advisors to interpret his perplexing dream, and the cupbearer mentions to Pharaoh that during his term in prison, a Hebrew slave, Yosef, had correctly interpreted his and the baker's dreams. The cupbearer recalls, "And it was indeed as he [Yosef] interpreted for us: I was reinstated in my post, and he [the baker] was hung" (41:13). One might wonder why the cupbearer found it necessary to specify Yosef's interpretation of the dreams. Seemingly, his point here is to attest to Yosef's talent in dream interpretation, and for this purpose it would have sufficed to inform Pharaoh that his interpretations proved accurate. Why did the cupbearer specifically mention that he was reinstated and the baker was executed?
Rav Yehuda Leib Ginsburg, in his Yalkut Yehuda, suggests that the cupbearer wanted to emphasize Yosef's "versatility" in dream interpretation, that he was capable of deciphering both dreams that foretold doom and those that heralded good tidings. His power lay in his sheer objectivity, which enabled him to decipher all dreams accurately, without approaching them with preconceived notions regarding their outcome. The fact that Yosef predicted both the cupbearer's reinstatement and the baker's execution demonstrated that his talents were genuine and he would not intentionally divert a dream in any preconceived direction. Indeed, Yosef's interpretation of Pharaoh's dream entailed both blessing and calamity. He predicted both seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine, just as he had foreseen both the cupbearer's freedom and the baker's death.
We might extend this theory just a bit further to draw a general lesson from the cupbearer's description of Yosef's talents. In all areas of life, it would do us well to "interpret" events and issues with pure objectivity and reach conclusions based on actual facts, rather than on our preconceived notions. All too often, people tend to mold the hard data to suit their intuitive sense and a priori conclusions, rather than molding their intuitive sense in accordance with the hard data. Yosef's interpretations of dreams perhaps teaches that in interpreting events around us, we should be theoretically prepared to reach conclusions in either direction, depending on the objective information before us.