We know too much and are convinced of too little, T.S.Eliot, Selected Essays 1928.

One of the pressures I try to resist is the feeling that I ought to keep up with the streams of thought and knowledge concerning my areas of interest. Apart from the fact that it would be a futile attempt, I am convinced that in these days of knowledge economy the way of wisdom may be, on occasions, to close the door and find time to reflect. Knowing as much as possible is no guarantee to right action.

I read a report about an experiment on the effect of supposedly irrelevant information on the way people made judgements of value. For example, in assessing the quality of a presentation, control audiences were told how much or how little preparation had been put in by the presenter. What the researchers found was that the information clearly slanted the responses given, even when respondents asserted that the information was not relevant. Because of the way we think the world works, extraneous information has the effect of pulling our thinking in a certain direction. What is even more disturbing is that it has this effect even when we are fully aware that it should not.

Some knowledge fits so well with our existing view of the world that we are unaware of its influence, and we are unaware of the way we allow it to obscure other knowledge that does not fit our expectations. This is what psychologists describe as cognitive dissonance reduction, which, being translated into Anglo-Saxon, means self deception.

With the above example, we may be correct in our view that, generally speaking, more effort in preparation equates with better results. But if the goal is truly an assessment of a final piece of work that stands on its own, then other information does present an obstruction. I am quite aware that the example has weaknesses, but the point is surely taken that we are more inclined to persist in our beliefs than to go through the painful process of revising them. Both in the context of learning and in that of knowledge management in business, the knowledge we most need is more likely to be precisely the knowledge we do not yet have.

This leads to another question I wish to raise: how do we make space for knowledge? How do we make it possible for learning to take place? For new ideas to emerge there has to be a setting aside of current thinking. Accepted beliefs may need to be suspended. We may need to get out of our own shoes and spend a day walking around in someome elses shoes (with glad acknowledgement of To Kill a Mockingbird).

Learning requires of us that we become learners. A tautology perhaps, but only in a grammatical sense. In human behaviour it is far from tautologous. Learning, and hence gaining knowledge, and the conviction of knowledge that T.S.Eliot refered to, is only achieved through a willingness to see things from another perspective. The problem is that the more we know, the more we have to suspend belief, and the harder is to achieve the ignorance that allows unanticipated knowledge to surprise us.

There are some practical steps we can take towards this kind of learning and openness to unknown and potentially invaluable knowledge.

tbc