The Curse of Knowing

Hi everyone, this is part of Hidden in Plain Sight which is my ongoing series exploring the psychology behind communication, confidence and being seen.

One of the questions I ask almost every client at Studio Nine sounds deceptively simple.

“So, what do you do?”

Most people answer immediately. Then, somewhere around thirty seconds later, they pause, smile apologetically and start again.

“I don’t think I’m explaining this very well.”

They’re usually right.

But not for the reason they think.

It is rarely because they are poor communicators. More often, it’s because they know far too much.

I’ve started noticing that the people who struggle most to explain what they do are often the very people who know their subject best. The accountant who has spent twenty years helping businesses navigate tax, compliance and growth. The nutritionist who instinctively connects sleep, hormones and lifestyle before they’ve even finished listening. The therapist who sees patterns their clients haven’t yet recognised. The business owner who has solved the same problem hundreds of times.

Somewhere along the way, their expertise quietly changed the way they think.

What once felt complicated became instinctive. What once required conscious thought became second nature. The language they use every day became so familiar that they stopped noticing it altogether.

Psychologists call this the “curse of knowledge”.

Once we understand something deeply, it becomes remarkably difficult to remember what it felt like not to know it. We skip steps without realising, fill in gaps that nobody else can see and assume that the person listening has made the same journey that we have.

They haven’t.

That is often where communication begins to unravel.

Not because the audience isn’t paying attention.

Not because the expert lacks confidence.

But because the distance between what one person knows and what another person understands has quietly become much wider than either of them realises.

I see this everywhere.

People explain their process before they explain the problem. They describe their service instead of the transformation it creates. They list qualifications, packages and methodologies before helping somebody understand why any of it matters.

Then they leave the conversation believing people didn’t understand them.

Most of the time, people understood exactly what they heard.

It just wasn’t the story the expert thought they were telling.

That is why I don’t believe most businesses have a content problem.

I believe they have a clarity problem.

Not because they lack ideas, but because they have become so familiar with their own world that they no longer notice where other people become lost.

It’s something I see almost every week at Studio Nine.

People often arrive convinced they need help with social media, video content or being more confident on camera. They assume the answer is a better script, a stronger hook or a more consistent posting schedule.

Instead, we begin somewhere entirely different.

We ask questions.

Questions that can feel surprisingly uncomfortable because they challenge assumptions that may have gone untested for years.

Who are you really trying to help?

What problem keeps that person awake at night?

Has your experience changed the audience you should now be speaking to?

Are you describing what you do, or are you describing the change you create?

Is your business still communicating with the audience it started with, or has your expertise naturally evolved into something that serves somebody else?

These aren’t marketing questions.

They’re thinking questions.

Very often, the answers reveal that the business has grown while its messaging has remained exactly where it was two or three years ago. The expertise has deepened. The service has matured. The ideal client has changed. Yet the words being used to describe it all have stayed stubbornly the same.

Only then do we begin talking about content.

Because clarity rarely comes from writing more.

It usually comes from understanding more.

I’ve begun to wonder whether clarity is really an act of empathy.

It asks us to leave our own perspective for a while and meet somebody where they are instead. That isn’t about simplifying your expertise or diluting your knowledge. If anything, it requires a deeper understanding of both. It asks you to untangle years of instinct, experience and assumptions, then rebuild them in a way that somebody else can actually follow.

Perhaps that’s why the clearest communicators aren’t always the people with the most knowledge.

They’re the people who have never forgotten what it feels like to stand at the beginning.

The real challenge isn’t becoming more knowledgeable.

It’s remembering what it felt like before you were.

Because what has become ordinary to you may be the very thing somebody else has been searching to understand all along.

Lizzie Barnett is a communication strategist, speaker and founder of Studio Nine. She helps businesses turn expertise into clear, confident communication through workshops, consultancy and practical strategy. She is also the editor of Southport’s Journey magazine.