There are different levels of quality in knowledge and information. Not everything we “know” is equally reliable. Some things are well-checked and stable, other things are based on quick impressions, misunderstandings, or old data. On top of that, different people can understand the same information in different ways.

One simple way to think about quality is to look at the degree of confirmed correctness. In practice, that means asking: how sure are we that this is actually true? Is it something someone just said once, or something that has been checked and confirmed? Everyone has experienced this in communication: what one person meant, what another person said, and what a third person understood are not always the same. Messages can easily be misunderstood or distorted when they are communicated and interpreted.

Because of this, it is important to have an explicit relationship to the quality of the information and knowledge we work with. Instead of treating everything as simply “true” or “false”, we can ask how certain we are, what this certainty is based on, and how likely it is that something has been misunderstood or misinterpreted.

This can be supported with practical tools and habits. For example, using gradings or levels of certainty (“uncertain”, “partly confirmed”, “confirmed”), doing simple checks and controls, and asking clarifying questions about source and context. We can also look at how new or old the information is, and mark recency or freshness (“last updated”, “based on data from…”), because information can lose relevance over time.

It can also help to ask for confirmations when something is important: who has checked this, and how? Has more than one person or source confirmed it? At the same time, we can consider how important the information is: some things can be approximate without causing problems, while other things really need to be correct because they are critical for decisions, safety, or legal reasons.

In everyday work, a small shift can make a big difference: instead of only asking “Is this correct?”, also ask “How sure are we that this is correct, and how do we know?”. By being more conscious of the quality of knowledge and information, we reduce misunderstandings, improve decisions, and communicate more clearly.