Subject Matter Experts vs. Subject Matter Enthusiasts

Like most industries, the financial crimes risk management industry is rank with jargon, axioms, and hackneyed phrases we all toss around with plenty of abandon but little discipline. Rising to the top of this heap is “Subject Matter Expert” or “SME”.

More important to the success or failure of any endeavor than the self-styled Subject Matter Expert is the dreaded Subject Matter Enthusiast. The Expert is just that: someone with talent, training, subject matter knowledge, environmental knowledge, and years of experience (and not just one year of experience many times, but many years of experience). The true Expert doesn’t see him or herself as an expert, won’t call himself (I’m going single male pronoun from here on, if that’s OK) an expert, probably doesn’t see himself as an expert, but he possesses those traits, or enough of them, to truly be, and be seen as, a Subject Matter Expert. The Enthusiast, on the other hand, often calls himself an Expert when he isn’t, or thinks of himself as possessing enough of as many of the traits needed to pass himself off (for a limited period of time) as an Expert. The Enthusiast overcomes his lack of true expertise with just enough confidence, hubris, and (frankly) enthusiasm to move a project ahead or design a monitoring system just long enough to allow auditors, regulators, and prosecutors to catch up … and for the experts to later bail him (and the project or monitoring system) out. A Subject Matter Enthusiast usually means well but isn’t the “expert” he thinks he is ...

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