In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few

— Shunryu Suzuki

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of attending a cozy gathering where Gianrico Carofiglio, celebrated Italian author and former magistrate, unveiled his latest work, Elogio dell’ignoranza e dell’errore (“In Praise of Ignorance and Error”). During the event, Carofiglio wove through the paradox that our mistakes and the limits of our knowledge can become powerful springboards for growth. It was during this conversation that the Zen principle of Shoshin (“beginner’s mind”) made its unexpected appearance, not as a dusty relic of meditation halls but as a living, breathing ally in the art of personal and professional evolution.

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If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at an impenetrable wall of code, or watched one too many cybersecurity alerts parade across your dashboard, you know how quickly confidence can give way to inertia. We tell ourselves, “I’ve been doing this ten years; I know it all,” and before long, our assumptions calcify into barriers. Shoshin challenges precisely that rigidity: it urges us to approach each moment (each ticket, each algorithm, each incident response) with the openness, curiosity, and fresh eyes of a beginner. And though it sounds simple, its practice reveals subtle shifts in how we learn, lead, and innovate.

Shoshin: more than “Fresh Eyes”

Literally translating as “beginner’s mind,” Shoshin (初心) is rooted in Zen Buddhism. It’s the idea that a true beginner views the world without prejudice, free from the cage of past experiences or preconceived notions. The more experienced we become, the more our mind tends to fill with “expert opinions,” untested assumptions, and mental shortcuts. Shoshin invites us to empty ourselves of those assumptions and return to a state of lively receptivity.

A few key facets of beginner’s mind:

  • Openness: Welcoming new ideas, even if they conflict with what you “know.”
  • Curiosity: Asking “why?” or “how?” with genuine wonder, not because you’re supposed to.
  • Humility: Acknowledging that no matter how much you’ve learned, there’s always more terrain to explore.

In the realm of technology and cybersecurity, these facets might seem at odds with the emphasis on specialization and deep expertise. Yet it’s precisely because our field moves so quickly (new vulnerabilities, new frameworks, new paradigms every day) that we risk stagnation if we rest on our laurels.

Shoshin for engineers and cybersecurity specialists

Imagine Maria, a seasoned software engineer who has built microservices in Java for years. A new project lands on her desk: a reactive, event-driven architecture in Kotlin. Her first instinct is to map the new codebase onto patterns she already knows: “This is just Vert.x under another name,” she might think. But if Maria consciously adopts Shoshin, she silences that inner voice and approaches the architecture as a blank slate:

  1. Questioning the basics

    • Instead of skimming the docs looking for familiar landmarks, she starts by asking: “What problem does this library solve that our old stack could not?”
    • She sketches out the data flow on a whiteboard, even though she “already” knows event loops.

  2. Learning publicly

    • Maria pairs with a junior colleague new to microservices. She listens to their unfiltered, curious questions: sometimes even reigniting insights she’d forgotten.

  3. Building Mini-Experiments

    • Rather than tackling the entire codebase head-on, she prototypes a small feature in isolation. Mistakes here are cheap lessons, not crisis-level failures.

In cybersecurity, Shoshin can be a potent antidote to complacency:

  • Assumption audits Each incident review, take ten minutes to list out assumptions: about attacker tactics, about user behavior, about system resilience. Then challenge each. “What if the attacker isn’t human? Could it be an automated script?”

  • Red Team/Blue Team role reversal Invite the defenders to “attack” their own systems, and let the attackers defend. This flip, viewed through fresh eyes, often uncovers blind spots more seasoned testers may overlook.

  • Learning from Non-Security domains Apply Shoshin by borrowing puzzles from game theory, or by studying how biologists track invasive species: patterns that might map onto network infections.

Shoshin from the manager’s chair

If you lead a team (whether as a project manager, CISO, or CTO) Shoshin can reshape your leadership grammar. Managers often feel the pressure to have all the answers: to pick the right stack, to anticipate the next breach, to set the “vision.” But embracing beginner’s mind means recognizing that great ideas often bubble up from the most unexpected corners.

1. Cultivate an environment of questions

  • Weekly “No-Answer” sessions: Set aside thirty minutes each week for staff to bring up any question (technical, procedural, even philosophical) without expecting an answer. Record them; revisit later with research or a collaborative brainstorm.

  • Reverse brainstorming: Ask your team, “How could we make our security posture worse?” The outlandish answers often expose hidden weaknesses you’d never consider under “business-as-usual” scrutiny.

2. Model vulnerability

When you don’t know, say so. If a conversation turns to a new cloud-native framework you haven’t touched, admit it, and propose you and a couple of team members learn together. Your juniors will feel empowered to speak up when they’re uncertain, and your seniors will find renewal in rediscovery.

3. Reward Process over Pedigree

In performance reviews, emphasize the learning journey, not just the final deliverable. Did someone take the time to dissect a past incident with open-minded curiosity? Did they propose an experiment, however small, to test a hypothesis? Acknowledge that.

Practical steps to onboard Shoshin today

You don’t have to retreat to a mountain temple to practice Shoshin. Here are a few bite-sized exercises for anyone in tech or cybersecurity:

  1. Daily “Five-Minute Pause” Before kicking off your tasks, take five minutes to write down any assumptions you’re bringing into your work today. Then, for each, jot down a question that could falsify that assumption.

  2. Learning bingo Create a card of eight tiny challenges: “Pair program with someone junior,” “Write down three ‘dumb’ questions,” “Read a blog post outside your specialization,” “Use a new CLI tool,” etc. When you complete a row, treat yourself, a coffee, a walk, a Slack shout-out.

  3. Perspective swap Once a month, shadow someone in a different role: a customer support engineer, a network admin, or even a marketing teammate. Notice what you take for granted in your daily work and what they grapple with that you’d never imagined.

  4. “Shoshin Sprints (Bonus step)” Hold a quarterly hackathon where team members must build a toy project in a domain they’ve never touched. The rule: no Google until after trying first, then a collaborative debrief on insights and blind spots.

From individuals to organizations

When a single person embraces Shoshin, the benefits are immediate: sharper problem-solving, reduced egos, more creative solutions. But when entire teams, or entire organizations, practice beginner’s mind, the impact multiplies:

  • Faster onboarding: New hires see a culture that values fresh perspectives, so they ramp up more quickly.
  • Continuous innovation: Senior engineers don’t “close the book” on older projects; they revisit them with fresh curiosity.
  • Resilient security posture: By continuously challenging assumptions, you’re less likely to be blindsided by novel attack patterns.

In a world of ever-evolving technologies and threats, the organizations that thrive aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets or the most illustrious pedigrees. They are those that stay hungry, hungry to unlearn, to relearn, and to remain, in spirit, perpetual beginners.

Ignorance, error and true learning

Back at Carofiglio’s presentation, I found myself scribbling “Shoshin” in my notebook next to “ignorance” and “error.” It struck me that the very terms our society treats as weaknesses (“I don’t know,” “I made a mistake”) are the fertile soil for any true learning. In technology and cybersecurity, where we face puzzles that are sometimes centuries old in philosophy yet brand-new in code, beginner’s mind isn’t a naïve stance. It’s a strategic choice.

So the next time you’re confronted with a gnarly bug, a baffling alert, or a leadership decision that feels too big, pause. Ask yourself: “What would I do if I had never encountered this before?” Let that question guide you, even for just a few minutes, and notice how your perspective shifts. You might just rediscover the joy of learning, and in turn, unlock solutions that expertise alone could never reveal.