Experts are a captive of their specialty, an area of focus, a paradigm that has worked for them, perhaps even an ideology. In a good way, experts are biased toward their belief structure. This is an absolutely critical part – a necessary part – of getting to the best information. But, there is another part of the story and this is how the expertise actually worked for the recipient in its real world application. What happened when the knowledge was applied? What can be learned from practical experience? What were the surprises? What were the unintended consequences? This completes the formula for true knowledge. In fact, knowledge is an iterative phenomenon, the fruit of a dynamic process, and each bit of new fact based information changes the context and breeds new perspective. Sometimes the best answer lies some distance away from the expert solution.

Hence, we might look at fourth quarter information as deeply impacted by perspective and real world experience. It trades ideology for compromise. It gives you permission to question orthodoxy, and examine where it came from. It asks how to tailor a general solution to one which fits a person with the same general need, but a person in the last quarter of their life, or less. It begs to know how best to deal with family members when you are conflicted between what you believe is best for them, and what they want. You don’t want to run away from long believed principles, but you also want to allow for adjustments to differing situations and times. Yes, fourth quarter information is a bit gray in this time when information seems to trend toward the black and white.