From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishtake a (long) hard look at something/somebodytake a (long) hard look at something/somebodyto think carefully about something, especially with the result that you change your opinions or behaviour You should take a long hard look at the issues before committing yourself. → hard
Examples from the Corpus
take a (long) hard look at something/somebody• Instead, they take a hard look at a difficult moral and political dilemma and find no easy answers.• Blairites could take a harder look at a rhetorical vocabulary in which every single item was anticipated by totalitarianism.• In practice, many doctors are too busy to take a long hard look at every patient.• The latter allows both parties a chance to stand back from the daily routine and take a harder look at overall performance.• Or you can take a hard look at the feminist agenda.• Some one needs to take a long hard look at what has happened to tennis in Ulster over the last 20 years.• After the inevitable posture of being affronted, I took a hard look at what I was doing. 