I disagree that they don’t apply, since there is a subjective discussion, the issue is we’re talking about something very abstract like it’s always black and white when reality has a lot of grey.

How are we defining knowing better here?

If we’re saying the leader knows that there is information they don’t know, but they act like they do know that information then that can lead to trust issues.

If a leader doesn’t know that they don’t know something, then you would hope they have the capacity to learn and are willing to learn new pieces of information so that they can be more informed.

In either case though, you expect them to act based on the information in front of them that they are familiar with. If you bring up new information, in a low stakes setting, they should be open to receiving that new information.

If you bring up new information in a high stakes setting, that can catch some leaders off-guard since in theory they have had time to review all of the present information before a setting was high stakes. If for some reason the ‘facts table’ being used is wrong or outdated then I believe discreetly bringing this information up to the leader in these situations can be beneficial but I would leave the judgment call to them for what information to go off of.