The Less You Know, The More You Think You Know & You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Here is the scenario. Two colleagues sit in a meeting and the project manager asks a questions. Colleague 1 starts to answer the while Colleague 2 is thinking…. “This person doesn’t know what they are trying to explain”? Then Colleague 2 realizes that they can easily answer because they are more familiar with the answer than Colleague 1. Yet, Colleague 2 said nothing. Why? So in this situation, Colleague 1 knows less but thinks they know more and it is very likely that Colleague 1 doesn’t recognize the lack of their own skill. Why didn’t Colleague 2 say anything???
These two concepts are not new and have probably existing since humans evolved. However, it wasn’t until 1999 that David Dunning and Justin Kruger first experimentally observed this phenomenon in a series of experiments. The study was inspired by a bank robber in a case of McArthur Wheeler. He robbed two banks covering his face with lemon juice in the belief that lemon juice is used as invisible ink and he would not be seen by the cameras. Earlier studies underlined that ignorance of standards of performance lies behind a great deal of incorrect self-assessment of competence.
As defined by Wikipedia.com the definition is as such: “The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a meta-cognitive inability of those of low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.”
This pattern of over-estimating competence was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, practicing medicine, operating a motor vehicle, and playing games such as chess or tennis. Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
? fail to recognize their own lack of skill
? fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
? fail to accurately gauge skill in others
? recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill
As stated above there are two facets to this phenomenon.
First, the illusory superiority = “The less you know, the more you think you know; & you don’t know what you don’t know”.
Secondly the high-ability individuals underestimate their relative competence. In this case, individuals assume people around them know as much or even more than they know so they choose not to engage in dialogue in fear of being embarrassed, humiliated, or corrected.
This doesn’t mean there is a superior layer of managers or experts that once one worked for so many years they somehow have absorbed every possible aspect of project management knowledge. In my opinion we all suffer from both facets of this phenomena in almost a daily situation. The only way around this it to recognize & acknowledge your own lack of skill, and then feel comfortable with the knowledge you do know.
So the question: “How do I know what I don’t know?”. You don't. I would suggest you would need to start looking around to your peers and engaging in their fields of work. Or go to the extent of asking your peers for a peer assessment.
Please take self-responsibility and make your own personal assessment. Don’t be embarrassed to admit you don’t know the answer.
Reference:
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Peter Principle