The blind spots of familiarity

Everyone thinks they know their customer, and to an extent, they do.

But knowing is different from listening and when you’re inside a business, listening can be harder than it looks.

The importance of impartiality

When you run research in your own organisation, you bring baggage with you. You already know the acronyms, the processes and the roadmap debate that have been looping for years.

Familiarity can sneak into the way you frame a questions, the way you react to an answer, or even the way you decide what’s “useful”.

This isn’t malice, it’s organically human nature, but it does impact the effectiveness of your research.

• You can mentally finish the customer’s sentence for them

• You can gloss over the obvious because it feels repetitive or a dead-end

• You can focus more on confirming assumptions than exploring different perspectives

Without realising you’re validating what you already believe instead of uncovering something new.

Why impartiality matters

The point of qualitative research isn’t comfort, rather clarity.

Clarity comes from sitting in the tension. An impartial ear hears what an invested one can’t. The “stupid” questions, the offhand complaints or the sighs between sentences.

It’s hard for these moments to land if you’re already carrying the weight of the business on your shoulders.

The illusion of proximity

The hardest thing to accept for most teams is that being close to your product doesn’t make you closer to the customer.

The danger is thinking “we already know this”.

More often than not, the customers shortcuts, frustrations and compromises live in the spaces you’ve stopped looking.

The alternative

Good research is more than asking great questions, we have to create space for answers we don’t expect.

Impartiality matters. It’s why the best insights often come from someone who isn’t weighed down by the politics, the jargon or the backlog of assumptions.

At Somewhen, we come in with open ears because we know the hardest thing to do when you’re living the business is to hear what’s right in front of you.

A little distance and outside perspective goes a long way to making things clearer to see.