Overconfidence in workplaces: The problem and the solution
The Bottom Line Up Front
Overconfidence invites risk in the workplace — people charge forward, unaware of the limits of their capabilities. Blank Slate detects and fixes these blind spots before overconfidence turns into costly mistakes.
The Problem
When we’re learning something new, like a system at work, we often encounter the material through demonstrations, videos, manuals, or workshops. After going through the content, we start to feel comfortable, maybe even confident. We think, “I’ve got this — I understand it well enough to do it on my own.”
But then, when a colleague asks us to explain how the system works, we freeze. The details we thought we knew suddenly feel out of reach.
Sound familiar? This experience is surprisingly common, and it highlights a cognitive trap many people fall into. It’s part of a broader phenomenon known as the Dunning–Kruger Effect, where individuals overestimate their understanding or abilities [1]. Their confidence gives the illusion of mastery, while critical knowledge gaps go unnoticed. But when it’s time to recall or apply what was learned, those gaps become painfully clear.
The Evidence
In a 2016 study, researchers in New Zealand examined the relationship between employees’ actual performance and their confidence in their abilities [2]. The research focused on employees who regularly used workplace computing systems but were not professional programmers or IT staff, and collected data across multiple organizations.
Study Methods
Ninety-one regular workplace computer end-users from various organizations and occupations participated in the study. Participants completed questions assessing their knowledge of everyday computing tasks relevant to their jobs, alongside self-ratings of their confidence in this knowledge. This study examined the extent to which participants’ perceived competence aligned with their actual performance, highlighting how confidence and knowledge interact in the workplace.
Study Results
Consistent with prior research on the Dunning–Kruger effect, this study found that employees with lower performance on computing tasks reported disproportionately high confidence in their abilities. Specifically, participants believed their knowledge exceeded the average level expected of typical computer end-users. In other words, employees not only overestimated their own performance but also assumed their knowledge was above that of others performing similar computing tasks.
At Blank Slate, we have seen the Dunning-Kruger effect in our own high performing end-users. In an ongoing research partnership with the US Air Force, pilots similarly demonstrate job confidence that exceeds their knowledge proficiency levels.
The Consequences
When confidence exceeds actual competence, organizational risk can increase. People may approach their tasks with confidence without realizing that gaps remain in their performance. Research in high-stakes environments such as aviation and healthcare consistently shows that miscalibrated self-confidence (i.e., overconfidence) contributes to procedural errors and lapses in safety, sometimes even more so than lack of knowledge [2, 3].
The Solution
Maintaining job confidence is important, but so is maintaining awareness that memory is not immune to forgetting or a lack of knowledge. This is especially important when regulations, systems, and workflows are constantly changing and knowledge is always in a new and fragile state. The only solution is to continuously update and reinforce knowledge.
The good news is that you don’t have to face the ever-changing information landscape and your own potential overconfidence bias alone. Blank Slate provides workforces with a tool that detects and closes knowledge gaps across workforces, automatically reinforcing each individual’s weak points so they don’t have to rely on their own confidence to judge what they do and don’t know.
By using its adaptive algorithm to figure out what employees do and don’t know, Blank Slate turns blind spots into learning opportunities, offering a solution to outsmart the Dunning–Kruger effect before it hinders performance.
References
- Dunning, D. (2011). The Dunning–Kruger effect: On being ignorant of one’s own ignorance. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 247–296. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-385522-0.00005-6
- Gibbs, S., Moore, K., Steel, G., & McKinnon, A. (2017). The Dunning‑Kruger effect in a workplace computing setting. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 589–595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.084
- Yazdi, M. (2025). Confidence versus competence: The role of the Dunning-Kruger effect in workplace safety. In Safety-Centric Operations Research: Innovations and Integrative Approaches: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Managing Risk in Complex Systems (pp. 73–89).
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Stephany D. Rea, MEd
Data Scientist, Blank Slate Technologies
