Technical presentations: the trap of assumed shared knowledge
In a technical presentation, a manager's expertise does not guarantee that the committee has the background it needs to make a decision. The managerial question is specific: how can we check that an oral recommendation remains intelligible to people who do not share its author's knowledge?
What the literature establishes
Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber (1989, Journal of Political Economy) show experimentally that better-informed people struggle to disregard their information when predicting the judgements of less-informed people. This “curse of knowledge” means that knowing the answer can interfere with estimating what someone else can understand or anticipate. The study concerns economic settings, not professional presentations: it establishes a relevant mechanism, rather than directly measuring speaking effectiveness.
The mechanism: attributing one's own knowledge to the audience
Raymond S. Nickerson (1999, Psychological Bulletin) reviews the literature on how we estimate other people's knowledge. Our own knowledge often serves as a starting point, with adjustments that may remain insufficient. For technical presentations, this suggests a specific risk: omitting an essential premise because it seems obvious to the speaker.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that technical terms should be removed and messages systematically simplified. These studies do not support that general prescription: specialised vocabulary can be useful when its distinctions are genuinely shared. The task is instead to make the knowledge required to follow the reasoning explicit, without removing the conditions or uncertainties on which the decision depends. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence and current practice cannot establish
An economic experiment and a review of how people estimate others' knowledge are not enough to validate a presentation method for an industrial committee. In practice, the absence of questions is not proof of understanding either: it cannot distinguish agreement, reservations and difficulty articulating an objection. We therefore need to observe what recipients can restate, while keeping understanding separate from agreement.
A practical check in Neuchâtel
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources' “Public Speaking & impact” programme, an exercise could start with a recommendation concerning a manufacturing tolerance, component qualification or investment in inspection equipment in Neuchâtel's microtechnology, watchmaking and precision microelectronics sectors. Before presenting, the speaker records the decision requested, its rationale and one condition under which the recommendation holds; immediately afterwards, each listener restates them individually, without consulting others. The measure is the proportion of responses that correctly reproduce all three elements against a predefined scoring guide, with responses retained for verification. A second version can be tested with a comparable group that has not heard the first: the comparison provides a local indicator of intelligibility, without on its own constituting causal evidence. To go further: explore the Public Speaking & Impact training in Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Public Speaking & Impact in Neuchâtel
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