In the field of finance there have been several contributions that study how individuals make investment, financing, resource allocation and asset valuation decisions for the growth of organizations; however, two approaches have been generated that conceive the decision-making process from various perspectives; on the one hand, classical finance points out that individuals are informed and behave in a rational and maximizing way, while behavioral finance explains the behavior of the decision-maker based on cognitive and emotional factors, pointing out anomalies and inefficiencies in the information. This article reflects on the main characteristics of the approaches in the decision-making process, which guide an overview of the field of knowledge of finance from its traditional vision to a more current one. The research is of qualitative approach, descriptive documentary type with deductive method; as a result, a complementary position between the approaches is proposed, considering that decision making is a complex process that includes the individual's behavior and moves away from rationality, being influenced consciously and unconsciously by feelings, emotions, preferences and cognitive limitations in the understanding of information.