Ego and Clarity (#17)
The Interplay Between Egotism, Trust, and Clarity
In the spring of 2016, a tourist visiting Iceland rented a car at the airport, typed “Rekjavik” into his GPS, and began driving. He was, understandably, expecting to arrive at Iceland’s capital in a few minutes and settle in at his hotel. What he didn’t know was that his GPS had selected the wrong address. Several hours later, he arrived in Siglufjordur, a remote fishing village near the northern tip of the island, nearly 390 kilometers off course. The hotel was nowhere in sight.
When local reporters asked how the mistake had gone unnoticed for so long, his answer was disarmingly simple: “I was very tired after the flight and wanted to get to the hotel as soon as possible. That's why I kept driving.”
It’s a story we laugh at, mostly because we’ve all done something like it. We’ve all trusted the wrong thing because it looked official, sounded confident, or promised to get us where we wanted to go. But beneath the humor is a quiet lesson about how easily trust can be misplaced.
As writers, we want the reader to trust us — to be impressed by our prose, our insight, and our grasp of the system. But the more we center ourselves in the documentation, the more we distract the reader from what matters most: the content.
We shift the reader’s trust away from the guidance and toward the author. And just like our GPS traveler, we end up far from where we meant to go.
The Ego at the Center of the Page
Writers, especially those in technical roles, are often asked to do invisible work. Our names aren’t attached to product releases. We rarely demo our contributions. And while we’re expected to understand everything, we’re seldom the people in the spotlight.
Over time, this creates a quiet pressure. We want to be seen as knowledgeable. We want people to recognize the complexity of what we’re handling. We want them to trust us. And so, we reach for small ways to assert that identity.
One of the easiest places to do that is inside the writing itself.
It shows up in subtle ways. We add a section that wasn’t needed, but demonstrates our understanding of the backend. We include a diagram that doesn't really serve the user, but makes the architecture look more sophisticated. We explain a term in a way that flatters our depth, but slows the reader down.
Ego, at its best, drives us to raise the bar. It pushes us to master the product, to clarify every corner, to advocate for the user. Without ego, we may not care enough to get the details right. But ego causes trouble when it no longer serves the reader and instead begins to serve itself.
Ego Death
There is a strange paradox at the heart of good documentation. The more clearly and cleanly a piece of writing communicates, the less visible the author becomes. And yet, most of us are conditioned to believe that trust requires us to be visible, or that credibility requires us to leave our mark.
The best documentation doesn’t remind the reader how smart the author is. It lets the reader move forward without thinking about the author at all.
Authorial absence isn’t only modest. It’s clear.
When the ego steps back, the structure of the article can take over. The content becomes the guide, and the user starts following the flow.
The discipline of ego death isn’t about erasing your voice entirely, but it is about refusing to make your voice the point.
To be fair, it’s easy to fall into the temptation of emphasizing our own voices. When we craft a document that’s efficient and effortless to read, it can leave us feeling uneasy. It’s too light, too easy, too obvious. We begin to wonder whether anyone will take it seriously, or perhaps more selfishly, whether they’ll recognize how much we know.
That’s when we start revising – not to improve the article, but to reinforce our own expertise. And just like that, clarity gives way to control.
Why Simplicity Feels Suspicious
As discussed in last week’s post, researchers conducted a 2025 study on Terms of Use agreements. Participants were shown two versions of the same legal policy. One was written in plain language. The other followed traditional legalese.
The results were odd. Readers who saw the simplified version trusted the company more. But they trusted the terms less.
This phenomenon is a textbook example of the fluency effect, a cognitive bias where people assume that if something is easy to process, it must be less credible or less accurate.
This bias creates a negative feedback loop for writers. When our writing is clean, we worry it lacks authority. And so, we add. We insert friction, not to clarify, but to reassure ourselves.
The kicker to this whole dilemma is twofold:
The readers trusted the terms written in legal language, even though they couldn’t understand them. From a technical writing perspective, these terms failed because they didn’t provide actionable insight on the proposed agreement. We can’t be okay with writing this way.
The readers did not trust the terms written in clear language as greatly, even though they understood the content. They did, however, trust the company that communicated clearly. From a technical writing perspective, these terms succeeded because they offered actionable insight to the reader, even if the reader didn’t recognize this.
Here, then, is another paradox. If we want the reader to receive guidance and trust us, we have to write so clearly and simply that we question our own trustworthiness.
We can only win the reader’s trust when we disappear into simplicity.
Shifting Attention
How do we keep our ego in check without losing our edge?
First, we can ask better questions:
Does this document allow the user to take action without needing me in the room?
Have I removed every detail that doesn't move the reader forward?
Am I writing for the user’s clarity or for my own validation?
Can the reader trust the structure, the logic, and the flow, without trusting me?
Second, we can employ different editorial techniques:
The stranger test. Reread your piece as if someone else wrote it. Would you be impressed? Would you be confused? Would you still trust the document if your name weren’t on it? After you’ve answered these questions, bring in another reader to get fresh eyes on the article.
Reverse outline. Strip your article down to its headings or logical flow. If the structure doesn’t hold on its own, the prose is probably compensating for a lack of clarity.
These are small tools any writer can use to remind himself that the goal is not to be admired but to be useful.
Closing
The Icelandic tourist followed a confident voice and ended up 390 kilometers from his destination. Once trust had been misplaced in the expert GPS, every step forward took him further off course.
We risk the same thing in our writing.
When we ask the reader to admire our expertise, we make ourselves the destination. But readers don’t need to shower us writers with admiration. They need to receive clear direction from us.
Don’t get in the way of your content. Let it guide the reader forward. And if they get where they need to go without ever thinking about you, then your writing has done its job.
That’s what trust looks like. That’s what clarity requires.