The curse of knowledge is the tendency to assume other people understand a topic as well as the expert does. In security, it leads teams to overuse technical language and under-explain context. That creates confusion, lowers engagement, and makes it harder for business stakeholders to act on guidance.
Why the curse of knowledge happens
The curse of knowledge appears when expertise makes it difficult to remember what a less experienced audience does not know. In security teams, that often shows up as jargon-heavy explanations, skipped assumptions, and guidance that sounds precise to experts but opaque to the people who need to act on it.
It is not just a communication flaw. It is a comprehension gap that changes how information is received, whether stakeholders trust it, and whether a decision-maker can translate it into action.
How it shows up in security work
The strongest signal is mismatched language. A practitioner may explain a control, threat, or finding using abbreviations, architecture terms, or tool names that are routine inside the team but unfamiliar to product, legal, finance, or operational stakeholders.
It also appears when context is omitted. Security guidance may be technically correct yet still fail because it does not explain the business process, the likely consequence, or the reason a recommendation matters now.
In practice, the curse of knowledge can make a team underestimate how much background a reader needs before they can understand prioritisation, risk acceptance, or remediation. That is one reason good security writing often needs plain language, not just precision.
Why it matters for security decisions
Security decisions are often cross-functional, so misunderstanding is not a cosmetic problem. If people cannot follow the explanation, they are less likely to approve the work, fund the fix, or carry out the change correctly.
That can slow incident response, weaken policy adoption, and reduce the quality of feedback from non-specialist stakeholders. It can also create false confidence, where the author thinks the message was clear because it was clear to them.
Clear explanation is part of control effectiveness. A control that is not understood is often implemented inconsistently, challenged later, or ignored in day-to-day operations.
How to reduce it in technical communication
Effective security communication starts with the audience, not the subject matter. The same issue should be framed differently for executives, engineers, auditors, and business owners, because each group needs a different level of context to make a decision.
One useful habit is to separate the conclusion from the explanation. State what happened or what is recommended first, then add the minimum context needed to make the next action obvious. If a term is necessary, define it once in plain language before using it again.
Another useful habit is to test comprehension early. If a stakeholder cannot restate the issue or the recommendation in their own words, the message probably still reflects the expert’s mental model more than the audience’s.
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on October 31, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org