The curse of (IT) knowledge
Kerry McFetridge
February 2026
As an IT professional, have you ever written or presented to senior management on straight-forward technical problems or recommendations only to see the eyes of your audience glaze over as you get to your main points?
Or perhaps you’re a senior executive facing a business challenge and seeking advice. Then the person from IT arrives, concentrating on technical details and speaking in jargon that can seem like a foreign language, all without directly tackling your business concern. Too often, their responses focus on risks or costs, or simply sound like a “no,” rather than offering constructive solutions to your problem.
Information Technology people are particularly susceptible to "the curse of knowledge".
The "curse of knowledge" is a concept that describes those of us who work in a particular field and must communicate with people who don't.
What is the "curse of knowledge"? It is when a speaker or writer of a topic doesn't realise that simple concepts for them, are not straight-forward for their audience. They struggle to understand that their years of training, thinking and practical knowledge in a subject means their understanding of the topic is beyond the grasp of most other people not intimately involved in that subject or topic. The result is their writing or speaking sounds unrelatable, boring or off topic.
I first heard this concept from Steven Pinker, a Harvard Professor in psychology. See this video for his excellent description where he discusses this concept in an academic context. I realised this was something I had witnessed on many occasions – I just didn’t know the official label before.
Many of us can relate to the concept from an audience perspective when we've been in situations where the writer or speaker has lost us. Ironically, many of us are guilty of this exact problem when presenting or writing ourselves.
Communicating well is a key life skill. In our work lives trying to explain, convince, explain or seek a decision is a fundamental part of our work. If you lose the audience you've lost the opportunity to make a difference.
IT people are especially vulnerable.
If you don't think this is relevant to Information Technology writers or speakers, think again!
Years of technical IT practice and specific domain and industry knowledge go into articles, recommendations or webinars. It's little wonder that these can be method and detail heavy. The point is, the general business audience probably doesn't want to know this. They want to know how something supports a business outcome.
Avoiding jargon and acronyms are relatively easy to avoid or edit out. But communicating with clarity for non-technical readers or listeners requires more thought.
It's not easy to do, especially if your training isn't in languages!
Most of the team at Edge are from IT backgrounds, but we recognise many of the people who we work with are not. Many of those who bring us into their business to help them are actually in business leadership roles. We have worked hard as a team over the years to develop our communications in order to avoid these problems
This is how our team works to avoid these problems:
In our work as independent IT Consultants, we are aware of this issue, and it is important we don’t make this mistake (we’re not perfect by the way). Here is how our team works to communicate effectively:
We work hard to understand our client's broader strategic goals, then align consulting outputs directly with this. This forms the foundation for clear communication
Then we think about who the audience is. If it is for executives, many senior leaders do not want long explanations with bullet points and masses of data. They want to know they can trust the author and understand the issues in order to make a decision.
I used to work with Reg, an ex-military leader who would explain: "no more than a page, I want to know what the issue is, what the options are and your recommendation". "My job", he would say "is to make a decision".
A picture paints a thousand words. We use diagrams to communicate and clarify our overall approach to meeting a business outcome. We must explain recommendations in a way our readers understand, and in steps they can relate to. This is the core "curse of knowledge" concept. If we position something our audience doesn't understand too early in our engagement, they can't see how to get there and we lose our impact. We meet clients where they are and build achievable steps to guide them to their business goals.
I think about a good friend of mine who is a very success businessperson in a complex manufacturing industry, but he isn't an IT person. I think if I can explain something for Hugh and he understands it; I know I've hit the mark!
We aim for shorter documents and summaries. These are particularly hard to write because you have to strip down the issues to their core concepts. But this is how a non-technical person will grasp the issues and make a decision on the subject or recommendation.
Another very successful business person, Phil, once joked if he ever started another business, it would be "one-page-business-plans.com" because he is so convinced that brevity is king (or queen).
A well-known example is the “Toyota A3”: a concise, structured problem‑solving report constrained to a single A3 sheet
Any document, including drafts, which are due for customer release must be peer reviewed by a technical and non-technical team members. It can be very difficult for the technical people so deeply involved with consulting work to be able to stand back and write for the audience. A team approach to this is invaluable
All technical workings are either excluded from the document or placed in the appendix
AI. It’s clear AI is a big part of business. We use it to assist our own business with, for example, research, agents and software development. As well, we are regularly thinking how our customers can take advantage of this technology, but we keep raw AI away from our final recommendation work. Our customers want interpretation from real people in human language.
If you’re an executive working with IT
The next time IT comes in and baffles the audience with jargon and risk, remember it's the years of training and technical detail they are thinking through. Encourage them to clearly focus on the business problem, set clear guidelines in the form of recommendation structure and format and meeting agenda. Here are some other ideas:
Ensure they understand your organisations broader goals, and are addressing these
Ask them to consider the audience and match their work or presentation to them
Ensure there is a focus on simplicity and clarity. Encourage graphs to explain concepts and keep these, and accompanying documents shorter and jargon free.
If you’re an IT person presenting or writing for executive
When you’re presenting to an executive audience very often you are asking for them to make a decision. Often they do not want long explanations with bullet points and masses of data. They want to know they can trust you and your team and understand the issues in order to make that decision. Here are some ideas to ensure you are communicating well:
Ensure you understand how your work addresses the organisation’s broader goals. An IT platform is simply a way to meet a goal, not the goal in itself
Consider your audience – if it is technical, great, however if it isn’t, keep in mind the notes above on “the curse of knowledge”
Focus on simplicity and clarity. Use graphs to explain key concepts and keep these, and accompanying documents shorter and jargon free
Ensure your material has been peer reviewed
Keep technical details and data in the appendix unless it is critical for understanding
Do not use AI in the final documents or presentations.
At Edge Consulting, our role is to tie technology to business outcomes. Managing the "curse of knowledge" helps our team communicate effectively, allowing our clients make confident decisions faster.