52. How Engineers Can Communicate Uncertainty Without Sounding Uncertain Artwork

Successful Speaking for Technical Professionals

Welcome to “Successful Speaking for Technical Professionals,” the podcast dedicated to helping you shine in the spotlight and deliver your technical expertise with flair. I’m your host, Frank DiBartolomeo.

In each episode, I will draw from my over 40 years experience as an engineer and over 30 years experience as a Toastmaster to explore the nuances of presenting complex information in a way that resonates and engages.

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Successful Speaking for Technical Professionals

52. How Engineers Can Communicate Uncertainty Without Sounding Uncertain

August 19, 2026 • Frank DiBartolomeo • Season 3 • Episode 52

0:00 | 9:39

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was one of the most influential physicists and engineers of the 19th century

Engineers routinely work with probabilities, assumptions, incomplete data, forecasts, simulations, and technical risk.

The challenge is to acknowledge what is unknown while remaining clear about what should be done.

Research on risk communication consistently supports communicating uncertainty rather than hiding it—but tying that uncertainty directly to its significance for the decision.

In this podcast, you will discover three ways you can communicate uncertainty without sounding uncertain.

References

National Research Council. Improving Risk Communication. National Academies Press, 1989. The report recommends explicitly disclosing meaningful uncertainties, data gaps, confidence levels, and disagreements while avoiding both minimizing and exaggerating uncertainty.
Institute of Medicine. Environmental Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty. National Academies Press, 2013. Chapter 6 examines how uncertainty should be communicated in decision-making, including confidence, risk estimates, audience characteristics, and the effect uncertainty has on decisions.
Spiegelhalter, David. “Risk and Uncertainty Communication.” Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, Vol. 4, 2017, pp. 31–60. Reviews methods for communicating numerical risk, probabilities, verbal expressions, graphics, and deeper forms of uncertainty.
Sudret, Bruno; Podofillini, Luca; and Zio, Enrico. “Treatment of Uncertainty in Risk and Reliability Modeling and Decision-Making.” ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2019. Emphasizes that uncertainty modeling, decision-making under uncertainty, and communication of uncertainty should be integral to engineering risk management.
NASA. NASA Risk-Informed Decision Making Handbook, NASA/SP-2010-576, 2010. Provides a structured framework for evaluating alternatives and making engineering and program decisions when significant uncertainty exists.