Several years ago, my son and I planned to watch a basketball game on television. The Boston Celtics were playing the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. To my son’s disappointment, he had a school obligation that conflicted with the game. No problem, we thought, we’ll just DVR the game and watch it when we get home. To maintain suspense, my son and I both turned off our smartphones to avoid any media alerts. My wife stayed home for the evening and watched the Celtics win in overtime.

When we arrived home, my wife innocently said to us, “You guys are going to enjoy the game!”

“Mom!?!” My son reacted with disappointment, “You just wrecked it!”

Attempting to backtrack, she responded, “I didn’t say the Celtics won, I just said you will enjoy it.”

“Well then, obviously they won,” my son responded. “I’m not going to enjoy it if the Celtics lost! You completely wrecked it!” He was incensed and stomped out of the room, then went to bed in a huff without watching one minute of the recorded game.

The experience was a reminder to me that things can change the instant you learn something new, even if what you learn is a trivial detail. As my son’s reaction attests, it’s impossible to watch a basketball game with the same anticipation if the outcome is known. Similarly, it’s difficult to watch a movie with the same interest and curiosity if a friend or critic has spoiled the plot. When we learn something, our emotions change, our expectations change, and our perceptions change. And once we learn something, we can’t unlearn it. We might eventually forget it, but we can’t go back in time and accurately see things with the same eye or hear things with the same ear that we once did. Everything changes permanently with knowledge.

This concept is particularly important for SMEs because they know things other people do not know, and they cannot put themselves into a state of not knowing. The gap of knowledge between the expert and the layperson is often a source of tremendous frustration and distrust. It is incumbent on the SME to empathize with people. SMEs must deliberately try to put themselves in their audiences’ shoes and remember the difficulty they had learning their domain for the first time.