My daughter is always clarifying statements and asking questions because she needs things to be unambiguous. I think this is a great trait, except for those times when I don’t have a definitive answer or when I am unsure of something. This reminds me of a joke I heard:
I was at a funeral of a friend of mine. His wife asked everyone to say a quick word, so I stood up, cleared my throat, choked back my tears and said “Plethora”.
“Thank you,” his wife said. “That means ‘a lot’.”
The next man stands up and says “Earth.”
“Thank you,” the widow says. “That means ‘the world’.”
Another guy gets up and says “Water hole.” and sits back down.
The widow thanks him and says “I know you meant ‘well’.”
Another guy stands up and says “totality.”
The widow utters “Thank you, that means ‘everything’.”
A woman gets up and says “Underestimate.”
To which the widow replies “Thank you, that means ‘more than you know’.”
The last guy stands up and says “Bargain.”
The widow says “Thank you. That means ‘a great deal’.”
When you are working in a large cross functional team, there are often acronyms, abbreviations, technical jargon, systems, software, processes…that different teams use and are part of their daily vernacular, but people outside of that team have never heard of. When you are working on these teams, or talking to outside vendors, or working with a new team member, you should try and define any of the acronyms or slang that your team uses that others might not. If you are the project manager driving the meeting, or the product manager, defining requirements, you should be like the widow and clarify when someone uses terminology that might not be common knowledge.