How Do You Know What You Don’t Know?

Have you experience situations where you think you fully understand something that you actually don’t. Surprisingly, most people find they can’t explain the workings of everyday things they think they understand.

But they wouldn't know that they don't know until they try to explain it to someone else how it works. The truth is, we probably don’t know as much as we think we do.

In psychology, this cognitive barrier is referred to as the 'illusion of explanatory depth'. It means you think you fully understand something that you actually don’t.

The best way to uncover knowledge gaps is to closely examine our performance and progress to identify the areas where we are not succeeding as much as we wish we were, as well as the negative or unproductive scenarios that keep cropping up over and over again.

For instance, this year I observed that I was able to score a lot of dakwah meetings with my non-Muslim relative and friends, but then I rarely converted them to Islam. I eventually chalked it up as a weakness in my dakwah skills and sought immediate mentorship on the subject.

This way, i could improve on my Islamic knowledge and identify my weaknesses. I would ask myself specific questions like: “What is the one thing I could do more effectively to make my task easier?” and “If I could take one professional development course this year, what would it be most helpful for me?”

Do not assume we know everything because the first step to remedying any deficiency in ourselves is to acknowledge our weaknesses, and by admitting we don’t know what we don’t know, we’ve made a powerful proclamation about our future potential to become wiser and more knowledgeable.

Just like what Sheikh Nuruddeen Lemu used to say, "Dakwah is like washing clothes with your hands; before the clothes get cleaned, your hands are already cleaner than the clothes. When you share the message of dakwah with others, you will gain more knowledge and understand the message better...


Wallahu'alam