Few people are truly impartial. Some people prefer soup; others like salad. Some people like the window seat; others like the aisle. Some people enjoy rollercoasters; others are afraid of them. Experts, like everyone else, are influenced by their experience, education, colleagues, and more. And personal feelings, expectations, and aspirations frequently color what they say and do.

Experts have plenty of preferences, especially within their specialty. The more an expert learns about a subject, the more that expert becomes partial to specific techniques, processes, tools, and metrics. Often, the more expertise a person acquires, the more steeped with preferences they become.

People expect experts to possess bias. They rightly doubt that experts can become proficient without developing biases. As an SME, your audience believes you are biased, and with rare exceptions, they are correct. Therefore, you do not serve yourself, your audience, or your company well by hiding your preferences or pretending they do not exist. The best experts know they possess a certain perspective. They acknowledge that perspective and speak objectively about it. They distinguish preferences that matter from those that do not. Great experts don’t stubbornly hold onto preferences for the sake of habit, manipulation, or control. They quickly reject their own preferences when superior alternatives are discovered, and they regularly look for opportunities to change.

Some experts mistakenly believe that they sound more trustworthy, credible, or wise if they hide their preferences or deny they exist. For example, they think it is somehow inappropriate to boldly promote their own company’s products or services. They feel that their qualifications as an expert require them to be purely objective and totally impartial, even to the extent of denying their own motives or financial incentives.

SMEs should be big enough to admit where their preferences lie. If an SME’s compensation is attached in any way to a product or service within their domain, then they cannot be neutral. So, as an SME, don’t even try to be unbiased. If you portray yourself as unbiased, you are not believable. Pretending to be objective when you are not is damaging. Unapologetic objectivity is liberating to everyone.