I received an email with a request that left me genuinely confused. Not because the topic was complex, but because I couldn’t figure out what the person was asking for. Buried somewhere in elaborate sentences and terminology was a request ahead of a regulatory inspection, but I still don’t know what was expected of me.

This happens more often than it should in our profession. We read reports, proposals, and especially requests for proposals where the language is superficially sophisticated, but the actual message remains unclear. The natural response is to label this a “communication problem” – someone who knows their stuff but just can’t explain it clearly.

I think that misses the real issue.

The Real Problem Runs Deeper

If your thoughts actually aren’t that clear, you aren’t going to get them down clearly on paper. What appears as a communication issue is often actually a structured thought process problem.

I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly, especially with students and younger professionals. They’ll struggle to answer a question clearly, whether in writing or in person. When you dig deeper, it’s not that they can’t find the right words – they haven’t really figured out what they think about the problem in the first place.

The communications exam can be a bugbear for some people, and for different reasons. But some of the time when I see communication being a struggle, it’s students not being able to read the question, not being able to answer the question, or in our case with clients (or their procurement teams), not understanding what they’re really actually asking for. Because communication is at least half listening and receiving as it is writing down.

If you can’t understand the question and think about it, you can’t put your answer down, or your proposal down, or your scope down clearly. If your scope isn’t clear, good luck ever delivering on it.

Lead Astray To The Jargon Trap

There’s another layer to this problem that’s particularly acute in technical fields. Students get led astray by their peers, by teachers, and then by a lack of self-confidence about the right way to sound professional. They convince themselves that the way to appear competent is to use the fanciest, most convoluted language possible.

This becomes a malignant habit that gets reinforced over time – the more impressive you sound, the more professional you must be.

The opposite is true.

No one knows what you’re actually saying. I’m not sure you entirely know what you’re saying either.

The Writing Test

Here’s something I’ve learned from two decades of consulting: I can have seemingly amazing, brilliant ideas in my head that make complete sense. But when I have to write them down and explain them to somebody else, I sometimes realise it was complete nonsense. There were fatal flaws in my thinking, but it’s hard to keep all those complex ideas organised in your mind.

When you put it down on paper, you realise that doesn’t really work.

The discipline of writing – even if nobody else is ever going to read it – forces you to organise your thoughts. It reveals the gaps in your logic, the assumptions you haven’t examined, the connections that seemed obvious but actually don’t hold up.

This is why I find putting down notes incredibly useful, regardless of whether anyone else will see them. Writing isn’t just about communicating your ideas to others; it’s about clarifying them for yourself.

What Actually Works

The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires discipline:

First, figure out what you actually think. Before you worry about how to say something, make sure you know what you’re trying to say. If you can’t explain it simply to yourself, you don’t understand it well enough yet.

Second, choose clarity over impressiveness. Every time. The goal is understanding, not demonstrating your vocabulary.

Simpler words, simpler sentences, shorter sentences (but also a mix), active voice, more paragraphs and consciously ordered lists and tables – are all far more important than demonstrating familiarity with a thesaurus.

Third, take the reader on a clear journey. They haven’t been thinking about this for months like you have. Start where they are, not where you are.

Fourth, test your writing. Read it back. Better yet, have someone else read it. If they can’t follow your logic, that’s not their problem – it’s yours.

Beyond the Mechanics

I had the benefit of UCT’s Professional Communication Unit way back in 2001, which taught style and tone and formatting and structure. Everything they covered is still absolutely valid and relevant today – which says something about how timeless good communication principles are. But the technical aspects of writing – grammar, formatting, structure – are just the delivery mechanism.

The real work happens before you start typing: the work of thinking clearly about what you’re trying to accomplish, what your reader needs to know, and how to get them from where they are to where you want them to be.

This matters more than we sometimes acknowledge. Clear writing isn’t a nice-to-have skill that you add on top of technical competence. It’s fundamental to how you think through problems, how you test your ideas, and how you turn insights into action.

If you can’t write clearly about what you do, there’s a good chance you don’t understand it as well as you think you do.