When I was a kid in the 1940s and early 1950s, it was possible to ask a medical question of a physician and get a specific answer or an “I don’t know.” The answer usually comprised much of what was known in medical circles about a given subject. That is no longer true. Today, asking any medical question of a physician or just any question in the discipline of a professional expert can be a useless or even a danger.
There are several reasons why this is so.
First, the various disciplines of medicine are each so profound that no well-trained physician—even the Harvard, Hopkins, Stanford or Chicago variety—is capable of handling much more than their own narrow discipline and very general medical questions. Asking a physician, for example, about nutrition or exercise is often fraught with useless generalities. Many of them will tell you that, but some won’t.
That’s also true in business. Asking a manufacturing person about a sales matter, or a technologist about a marketing research matter is also liable to be a useless act. It’s just as true in digital app development. Even the very best app developers are rarely full-stack developers. They are either back-end or front-end developers, not capable of both.
It’s also true among consulting psychologists. Almost their entire discipline is devoted to back end, not front end. They are usually quite good at diagnosing the past—even from infancy—but inadequate at assisting in the development of healthy, productive behavior. Even Freud admitted this when he once commented that “the objective of psychoanalysis was to transform hysterical misery into common, everyday unhappiness.” That response exhibits his thinking’s bandwidth. Like today’s psych discipline, he’s a superb and helpful student of misery and unhappiness, but has little to say about what makes life worth living. Nothing to say about what makes a happy family life or a flourishing career life. And like his descendants of today, he has nothing to say about personal power, living for the good of others or for the good of humanity as a whole.
The point I’m making is that outside of their own narrow discipline and specific interest, professionals know little more than the bright college grad. Expecting more than that is unrealistic.
The second reason why this is dangerous is that many professionals are quite willing to weigh in on any subject that is seemingly related to their discipline. The sense of becoming an expert as a result of one’s education is so strong—and often so much of the professional persona—that he or she finds it very difficult to admit that they don’t know shit about your question. Realistically, because a question is digital doesn’t mean that a coder in digital understands and can provide you with an accurate answer outside of their narrow expertise.
On numerous occasions in my consulting business, I’ve stumbled into conversations in which an individual talks as though he knows a lot about coaching and development (2 areas of my educational/research/and learning expertise), but in point of fact he’s drawing conclusions that have no development basis whatsoever. Furthermore, when business clients ask me questions outside my contracted expertise, say about business strategy, my business strategy background is zilch, but my humanities background in historical and narrative strategy is extensive. Still, I beg off. But several senior execs have found my humanities background in strategy exceptionally useful, so I am willing to draw conclusions for them, but with caveats. I find that many experts seem unaware that discipline expertise may not be transferable. When professionals weigh in on subjects outside their fields, I’m always cautious. Amazing how a highly lucrative contract impacts my work with caution, needs for research certainty, and constant expertise development. So, I’m certainly not especially humble about my knowledge base, but I’m also careful to clarify my background—because it builds credibility: an inordinately useful characteristic of both short and long-term consulting success.
A third reason why asking questions of professionals, whether medical, legal or even business can be treacherous is that in a surprising number of situations the answers of experts may have both short-term and long-term negative impact. I have an unforgettable history with an urgent care provider, a well-educated physician, who was certain that all my upset stomach needed were a couple antacid pills. I knew my body well enough that the next morning I walked into the med school, talked to my urologist, and in five minutes he identified an already ruptured appendix—not just an upset stomach.
Comparable situations occur in all disciplines. Some AI development, for example, is rife with biased data resulting in problematic situations in numerous fields. Research indicates that medical diagnoses have a 40% error rate. My medical school internist, an exceedingly fine MD/PhD, was unaware of the error rate, but to my surprise thought that the error rate would be more like 60%. That’s right: 60%. The psych counseling rate of success is even lower. When I shared this data with my oldest friend, Dr. John Carter (now deceased), who graduated from seminary with me, went on to The New School in NY, and graduated with a PhD in psych, he suggested that the psych counseling success rate of 40% was “about right, but perhaps a little high”.
A fourth reason why asking questions of professionals should be done with care is both linguistic and rhetorical. Experts usually respond in fairly abstract language—making the interpretation very difficult for the non-expert and regularly leading to mis-interpretation. Low-level managers are often thrilled to get to work with someone at vice-president level, expecting superb coaching. I regularly warn such people that asking for coaching from anyone more than one level above you is asking for difficulty. In my business, I regularly suggest to a new manager that they would do best if they asked for help from an experienced manager, not a director or vice-president. Once a business person arrives at a senior level, they’ve already forgotten what the new manager is going through, have no way of talking about these early experiences and can only provide you with an abstracted response to your question, a response which offers as many opportunities for misunderstanding as there are new managers.
By now you may be trying to figure out why I’m writing this negative note. This is another of my blogs about social reality. The focus is on what you can actually expect from experts in most any field. Because I’ve lived in university communities and worked with experts in many fields, I’ve had numerous opportunities to understand the mis-intelligence of experts—especially in the sciences, business, psych and social behavior. If you take this analysis of how the world of expertise works, you’ll save yourself a lot of time—and eventually figure out how to find the expertise you’re looking for.