Knowledge, Ignorance & Uncertainty

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Organisations like to think of themselves as knowledge‑seeking machines. They invest heavily in data, analytics, and expertise. Decisions are framed around “what we know”. Where ignorance is considered in decision-making, this is usually limited to uncertainties in assumptions made, rather than exploring what organisations don't know.

Ignorance is present in every decision, but the process of identifying, assessing and documenting it is often inconsistent. Organisations tend to prioritise documenting uncertainty over ignorance, and documenting ignorance affecting decisions that lead to action rather than inaction. Even where ignorance is acknowledged during decision-making, it is often lost due to "information leakage" or "uncertainty absorption"[ii]. Where there is a lack of internal resistance to this process, over time organisations can "create an image of themselves that does not correspond to the reality of their operations.”[i]

These dynamics can impact risk teams: challenge of decision-making is often anchored to what is documented by the organisation. Pro-actively thinking about the type and nature of ignorance as it applies to an organisation's decision-making can create a powerful lens for risk teams.

Understanding Ignorance

Ignorance is not stupidity; it is a lack of knowledge, information or understanding. It can be classified by type and nature:

Types of ignorance

• Factual: not knowing or misunderstanding basic data, metrics, or empirical evidence. For instance, not knowing that Tokyo is in Japan.

• Object: oblivious to the actual impacts, consequences, and reality, often arising from a refusal to engage with available information. For instance, not knowing that Tokyo exists.

• Technical: lacking understanding of mechanisms, methodologies, or technicalities. For instance, not knowing how to read a map to find out where Tokyo is.

Nature of ignorance

• Scientific / Historical: ignorance of general facts.  For instance, a person not knowing that stealing is wrong.

• Situational / Circumstantial: ignorant of specific facts or details regarding their current situation.  For instance, a person may know that stealing is wrong, but is unaware that their current action is stealing.

• Wilful / Motivated: Choosing to ignore or suppress information to protect beliefs or reduce cognitive overload. This can be conscious or unconscious. A subset of this is “Functional Stupidity”, where employees disengage from critical thinking to maintain organizational harmony or efficiency.  For instance, this could result in suppressing or avoiding knowledge that an action is stealing.

Uncertainty is a subset of ignorance. It refers to imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown, and is particularly relevant for decision-making.

We can see how the natures and types of ignorance can interact, using the example of Climate Change:

	Scientific / Historical	Situational / Circumstantial	Wilful / Motivated
Factual	Not knowing the precise magnitude or timing of specific climate tipping points because the science is still evolving.	Lack of awareness of emissions because the data is fragmented across suppliers and not reported internally.	Ignoring or dismissing established evidence that human activity drives climate change in order to avoid consequences.
Object	Not fully understanding how climate change impacts ecosystems or societies (e.g. how rising average temperatures translate into extreme weather impacts).	Not understanding how climate change affects a specific organisation's operating model because it is framed as a distant or abstract issue.	Actively avoiding engagement with the real‑world consequences of climate change because acknowledging them would create moral or strategic pressure to act.
Technical	Limited understanding of the mechanisms linking greenhouse gas emissions to climate systems	Lacking the technical capability to model climate scenarios, stress‑test portfolios, or interpret climate risk metrics due to skills gaps or tooling constraints.	Choosing not to develop or apply technical climate models or scenario analysis because the results might challenge existing strategies.

Why Ignorance Matters

Not all ignorance is created equal.

Some ignorance stems from humanity's lack of knowledge. This form of ignorance can be reduced through research. It can be understood by recognising the limitations, assumptions and simplifications that are built into the information we rely upon to support decision-making.

Ignorance can be as the result of a choice: Individuals and organisations can decide, consciously or unconsciously, not to know certain things. This choice exists on a spectrum. At one end is a passive absence of curiosity; at the other is active avoidance. 

As I examined in Barriers to Speaking Up: Forever Chemicals at 3M , organisational silos can create ignorance by stopping employees from connecting the dots between different information sources.  This is an example of the active and engineered cultivation of ignorance. It took the form of secrecy, suppression of information, documentation destruction, and selective organisational memory.

Ignorance Can Be Useful

Not all ignorance is bad. For instance, information silos are often a feature of efficient and productive bureaucratic organisations.  There is a cost in providing all employees with all relevant information which starts to outweigh the benefits in larger and more complex organisations.

Information can also be disruptive, justifying the cultivation of ignorance. For example, leaders may seek to downplay short-term financial difficulties to prevent panic and resignations. This can impair risk team challenge where the risk team is also excluded from relevant information, or where risk fails to take into account the impact of information silos on risk identification and management.

Risk Teams and Ignorance

Where risk frameworks consider ignorance, they tend to assume that it is passively and accidentally cultivated. This can mean that they fall down where ignorance is wilful or motivated.

Risk team strategies and frameworks can be improved by seeking to identify and classify sources of ignorance at an organisational and function level. This allows them to develop an effective strategy for pro-actively understanding how ignorance can impact decision-making, performance oversight, and risk management.

Varying challenge approach by type of ignorance

Factual	Provide contradictory data from a reputable source.  Where no such source exists, and the risk team has insufficient social license to directly challenge business position, seek out external expertise with sufficient social license.
Object	Rather than engaging with a specific decision, step up a level to review and challenge limitations associated with frameworks in place to understand data.
Technical	Conduct risk reviews to understand adequacy of available tools.

Varying challenge by nature of ignorance

Scientific / Historical	Knowledge gaps can only be directly addressed by risk teams where they have sufficient social license in the relevant area to be seen as a valid source of truth.  Where social license is insufficient, external expertise will likely be required.
Situational / Circumstantial	This is difficult to challenge in real time: the general framework to support decision-making is normally fit for purpose, but the situation uncovers a limited instance of ignorance.  Risk teams should seek to identify and understand framework limitations so that they can pre-emptively raise concerns before edge-case decisions present themselves.
Wilful / Motivated	It is unlikely risk teams will be able to address points of ignorance head-on. Instead, this will require a multi-month (or even multi-year) strategy to shift the organisation's Overton Window [The Overton Window, Social Capital & Risk Management].

Some additional thoughts on Wilful / Motivated Ignorance

Ignorance can be used irresponsibly to maintain the status quo. A leadership team has the power to set priorities, allocate resources, and dictate the agenda of decision-making fora.  Combined, these levers can be used to impose a state of ignorance, or artificial uncertainty, upon the organisation, decreasing the likelihood of effective challenge of the status quo.

The abuse of power to create a state of organisational ignorance does not need to be carefully orchestrated.  ‘Uncomfortable’ knowledge can be “denied (by refusing to acknowledge or engage with information), dismissed (refusing information as erroneous), diverted (distracting attention) or displaced (substituting management of the problem with management of a representation of the problem).”[iii] 

The impact of actively and wilfully curated evidence corrupts organisational processes more broadly. Risk teams need to be alert to both direct and indirect impacts of it.

For instance, an effective campaign of climate change denialism by fossil fuel companies not only led to the rejection of legitimate scientific research and limited political action, it also caused scientists to self-censor: anticipating bad faith public attacks, they collectively reduced the range of their conclusions to the most defensible position. This led the scientific literature to systemically understate the potential impact of climate change.[iv]

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 I hope this blog sparks ideas and discussion. If you found it interesting, please share or connect with me on LinkedIn to contribute or provide feedback! 

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[i] Kwon, W., & Constantinides, P. (2018). Ideology and Moral Reasoning: How wine was saved from the 19th century phylloxera epidemic. Organization Studies, 39(8), 1031-1053. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617708006

[ii] March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1993). Organizations (2nd ed.). Blackwell Business/Blackwell Publishers.

[iii] Essén, A., Knudsen, M., & Alvesson, M. (2022). Explaining Ignoring: Working with Information that Nobody Uses. Organization Studies, 43(5), 725-747. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840621998720

[iv] Oreskes, Naomi. Merchants of Doubt : How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York :Bloomsbury Press, 2010.