Knowns and UnKnowns

I was looking at this posting on youtube and it is may sound funny but it makes a point.

Rumsfeld on Knowns and Uknknowns

Basically, there are four combinations of Knowns and Unknowns.

Donald Rumseld talks about three. Now Rumsfled is a smart guy. He is from Princeton and he was one of the youngest defense secretaries. He was Dick Cheny's mentor in the 70's. He was also an ardent fan of Milton Friedman.

Known Knowns:
There are things we know that we know.

Known unknowns.
That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.

Unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know.

There is one more thing that is missing which is the Unknown Knowns:
Unknown Knowns: That is to say that we don't know something that is already known. As consultants, we need to be cognizant of this.

An example would be something that is in the documentation that you don't know about. This may cause you to scramble to get this in the known task list once you find it or you may create an inelegant solution because you were not aware of it.

So be known....