Expertise is often presented as a collection of lessons learned. It is also a collection of beliefs discarded. This talk uses the format of a professional confession to examine the practices that once seemed unquestionably correct but became less useful with experience.
Each confession follows the same structure: what I believed, why it made sense, what it cost, the moment it broke and what I do instead. That structure keeps the talk from becoming a list of hot takes. It shows how reasonable professional habits become liabilities when context changes, seniority increases or the work moves from execution to influence.
Attendees are invited to examine their own sacred cows, including methods they defend because of identity, and advice repeated long after the conditions that made it useful have disappeared. The session balances humility with practical replacement behaviors.
Abandoning a rule does not mean abandoning standards. It means replacing ritual with judgment. By the end, participants will have a framework for testing inherited practices, a list of signals that a best practice has become performative, and permission to update how they work without treating earlier versions of themselves as failures.

Talk Outline
• Why seniority should produce unlearning, not just accumulated certainty
• Confessions: process, rigor, neutrality, perfection, and visibility
• The anatomy of a broken best practice: belief, benefit, cost, failure, replacement
• How to challenge sacred cows without becoming casually anti-method
• Build your own unlearning list and choose one replacement experiment

Key Takeaways
• A repeatable way to examine and retire outdated professional beliefs.
• Specific warning signs that best practice has turned into empty ritual.
• Replacement behaviors that preserve rigor while adapting to context.
• Permission to treat changed judgment as growth rather than hypocrisy.

Why Jen Blatz Is Qualified to Speak on This Topic
Jen Blatz brings a career spanning decades, giving her multiple professional orthodoxies to compare and question. Her senior-level practical UX experience allows her to turn candid mistakes into specific, useful lessons rather than generic career advice.