There's an influential paper about common ground. Despite its name, common ground is not a geographic location you can visit. It is a state of being, a relationship between people, the essential context in all human communication, continually changing. There's a thing called the “fundamental common ground breakdown”. Alice thinks Bob knows something. Bob doesn’t. And Bob doesn't know to ask about it. Because Bob hasn't asked, Alice continues to assume Bob already knows about it.
This breakdown is extremely common, and perhaps more so among late career engineers. It is hard for experts to see their own expertise, because hard-learned lessons have become second nature; the skills fade into the background and become habit.
Inquisitive early career engineers can be a huge help in repairing this fundamental breakdown.
For example, Eve may be mobbing with Alice and Bob. When Eve asks about the thing, Bob gets to learn it too.
Richard Cook has said some of the most powerful ways to learn from incidents is to have the experts explain what they were doing to people in the room with different expertise. It is pretty common that people will report "I had no idea it worked like that"... or similarly common to hear "how did this thing ever work?"
For late career peers, one of my favorite ways to invite this kind of inquiry is ask "are you familiar with ... ?" or "how much do you already know about ... ?" These are really non-threatening ways to build some common ground. When I ask this question, I can listen to establish how much detail to share or what area to focus attention. When someone asks me such a question I can offer a quick overview of what I already understand so they can skip the parts I already know and focus on the parts I don't.
If you're interested to learn more about common ground...
