Reproduced from my Atkins blog of 24.08.2011
New Scientist magazine has just confirmed something I’ve suspected for a
while.
Similarly, Rajeev Rameth and I have often mused that the most dangerous
type of engineer was the one who ‘didn’t know what he didn’t know’. They would
blindly design the most ridiculous of structures in complete confidence whilst
those seemingly full of self-doubt could be relied on to make logical progress
towards a safe solution.
Richard Fisher in New Scientist (30 July) discusses ‘The curse of
knowledge’ which can hamper performance in many fields. It was first spotted in
second-hand car salesmen. The sellers who knew the cars best – all the plus
points and all the flaws – assumed that their customers also did, and priced
accordingly. In doing so they misjudged the market and often got lower prices
than the ones ignorant of all the details.
Since then psychologists have found similar problems in other disciplines.
“It’s an oxymoron, but ignorance can be a virtue in education”. To teach
effectively you need to be able to see things from the naïve perspective of the
pupil – and the more you know the harder that becomes.
One of the key points New Scientist made was that “experts should say
‘don’t know’ in their own field of expertise more often” and this matches
closely to my own conclusions. When faced by a design problem it is vital that
you understand the split of things you don’t know and what you do – and then
test why you have those preconceptions about the latter. Don’t allow your ego to
pretend you know the answers.
Increasingly often I find it useful to pull teams right back to basics. Why
are we doing this? Do we really know what we are doing? Who actually knows what
we need to know? By doing this the team should become absolutely clear on what
the true basis of design is. Later when new requirements, pressures and ideas
arise they are in a much stronger position to steer the project through these
changes.
They also probably have a rosier, more positive view of the future as they
plunge into the future challenges than the all knowing expert. As David Dunning
of Cornell University notes “there are usually two stages to any given task:
planning and execution. Whilst you are more likely to be successful if you think
through the first stage a fully realistic picture during the second could be a
hindrance, not a help.”
Donald Rumsfeld evidently wasn’t far off the truth (for once): “There are
known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known
unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there
are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know.”
To succeed we should all doubt ourselves more!
Or should we?
Repeat after me: ‘I don’t know’.
