The act of imparting or exchanging information, providing direction, or passing on the news is more of an art than it is a science.  Clarity is founded on an individual perspective and to some extent, it is unique to each of us.

Strangely, because of the subjective quality implicit in any message the being coherent and intelligible with what we perceive to be full transparency can still result in misunderstanding.

Assumptions

In almost every communication both the sender and the receiver include things they accept as true or certain without the need for elucidation (i.e., assumptions)

Without assumptions being explicitly identified and defined it is easy for parties to believe the information being exchanged has a unique and clear meaning.  Sigh, sadly this is often not the case.  Depending on the assumptions the message could be very different.

Avoiding Miscommunication

One way communication is most likely to be misinterpreted.  Without the opportunity to test the message (i.e., two-way exchange), combined with a message that appears complete and clear it is easy for the recipient to assume they understood.

This situation applies to the information provider as well.  Without receiving feedback they can only assume the everyone understood the point and all is well.

In these situations, surprises occur frequently and the result is often by choruses of “that is not what I meant” and “well that is what you said”.    The intent of the message is not achieved.

Keeping the content simple is obviously one way to achieve clarity but most important is testing/validating the communication on multiple sources, getting feedback, and modifying accordingly.

This of course is really critical when providing directions or instructions on how to do something.  Misunderstandings can lead to costly mistakes.