Knowns and Unknowns
Developed by Dionysios Maroulis
Contents |
Introduction
This article argues about the categorization of Known and Unknowns. The categorization had been used since the Greek era and in many different areas of knowledge. The frameworks that will be described in this article are powerful tools to surface what we know and do not know about a problem. The first framework that will be introduced and explained is the: Knowns and Unknowns, and the second one is the: The Johari window technique.
One of the most recent and well known references about this topic was from Donald Henry Rumsfeld. In response to a query about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said these statements at a press conference in 2002.Even though he did not come up with the concept, it became his most famous line. "Known and Unknown" is the title of his book, and director Errol Morris made a documentary about him called "Unknown Known."[1] . Rumsfeld stated:
" Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones ".
