Things You Don't Know You Don't Know
Years ago, while building a business, a colleague recommended a book. I don't recall the title. What I do recall is a story from its pages — one that stayed with me.
In that story, a young man eager for success is challenged by his mentor. The mentor tells him, plainly: achieving great success will not come from the things you know. Nor will it come from the things you know you don't know. It is the things you don't know you don't know which will hold you back, or enable your success. Discovering and mastering those — that is where success is secured.
Agile Open Northwest attracts practitioners at the cutting edge of Agile and AI-assisted software engineering — people actively shaping how software is built and delivered.
I go knowing I will encounter ideas I would never have reached on my own, and to share my perspectives where they can be challenged or confirmed.
A graduate just beginning their career opened a session by sharing all the things they knew they didn't know. They were looking for guidance from experienced peers in the industry.
When my turn came, I referred to that story from the book.
The most experienced engineers in the room nodded, genuinely. The comments that followed confirmed what the nods already said: the engineers who go furthest in this craft are the ones who remain open. Not the ones who accumulated the most answers, the ones who remained most willing to question the answers they already had.
Have you ever dismissed something? I know I have. A principle recommended by someone whose work you respect. A practice you half-heartedly attempted. A pattern that keeps appearing in the work of engineers you admire.
You may be right about it. Some things deserve to be dismissed. But here is the question you cannot answer honestly without doing the work: how would you know? Did you consider it thoughtfully? Did you test it yourself?
Seniority makes this worse, not better. Every year of experience adds another layer of confidence between you and the risk of being wrong.
By the time you reach senior engineer, staff engineer, or architect, the insulation is considerable. You have earned your opinions. You have the battle scars to prove them. And that is precisely when the unknown unknowns are most dangerous, because you have the most authority to act on them and the least incentive to question them.
The engineer who stopped being challenged is the engineer who stopped growing. The tragedy is they are usually the last to know it.
A sermon I heard as a child has never left me. The preacher said: you can learn from your own thirty years of wisdom — or another's thirty years of wisdom can give you a head start.
Whose thirty years are you learning from?
Reconciling yourself to continuously discovering what you don't know you don't know keeps you fresh. It strengthens sound principles, refines your practices, and sets an example for those who follow.
Be reconciled!
