"The one thing that I know is that I know nothing." —Socrates

The first true mark of an expert is knowledge. For many people, pursuing expert knowledge is paramount. Expertise, for them, is all about the facts. They focus on verifiable truth, proof, and method, and concentrate on the hypothesis, the observation, and the validation. They believe that wrong ideas will eventually fail, but right ideas will stand forever.

To the knowledge expert, feelings do not matter and opinions are mostly irrelevant. What matters to them is the discovery of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be. To the knowledge expert, power comes from the mastery of details, the accumulation of progressing thoughts, and the layers of proof upon proof.

Paradoxically, the accumulation of knowledge is not what makes you an expert. It is what you do once you gain that knowledge. What will set you apart as an expert is how you explore the realm of the unknown after you have mastered all else.

There is a difference between a person who wants to be an undisputed game-changing expert and someone who is content with mere proficiency. Mastery of current knowledge is the path that leads to expertise; however, it is your exploration of the unknown that distinguishes you. Once you have pushed through the available information, stood on the edge of knowledge, and then pressed further, you become an expert.

Confucius put it this way: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." What makes you an expert is not your mastery of what is known, but your exploration of what is not known. Great experts are never content with what they already know.