06/11/2025
Every once in a while, I have to remind myself of what I share on stages as a speaker. The expert blindspot is my favorite concept to date and it helps me every single day.
I first read about it while wrestling with the launch of a product under the premise: “If it’s valuable, people will use it.”
But no one was using it. The data made it painfully clear. I sat there thinking: The value isn’t obvious to them. It’s only obvious to us. Because we’ve been living and breathing this product for months. That was my first encounter with what I now call the expert blindspot: The more we know something, the harder it becomes to imagine what it feels like not to know it.
We assume shared context that doesn’t exist. And it shows up everywhere:
Leadership.
Parenting.
Relationships.
Hiring.
Teaching.
Since then, I’ve built a small rule for myself: Whenever I feel too certain, I pause and ask: “Am I seeing this with expert eyes? Or beginner eyes?”
Because the truth is, The more we grow in our career, the more dangerous our blindspots become. The only way to keep growing is to stay a beginner, while working like an expert.
