I had never heard of Phillip Amour’s Five Orders of Ignorance until I read about them in Alan Page’s book “The A Word” . Quote follows:

0OI – Zero-Oh-I is lack of ignorance. It’s when you know something. I know, for example, that the first track on the Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers album is Brown Sugar.

1OI – lack of knowledge. I don’t know (or remember) what the track

is following Brown Sugar, but I could find the answer quickly.

2OI – lack of awareness. You have 2OI when you don’t know what

you don’t know. I know that there are Stones tunes that I’ve never

heard before, but it would be impossible for me to make a list of

Stones songs I’ve never heard before.

30I – lack of process. You have 3OI when you don’t have a suitable

method for discovering 2OI (for discovering what you don’t know

you don’t know).

4OI – _meta-ignorance.** **_You have 4OI when you don’t know

about the five levels of ignorance.

He goes on to explain that QA tests from 0OI and 2OI – we test from requirements (what we know) and then do exploratory testing to try to discover that which we don’t know we don’t know.  

I’m assuming 1OI is omitted because prior to testing a system, if you are aware of known blind spots (things you know you don’t know) then you will quickly convert them into 0OI’s. 

3OI starts to get a little…trippy. It’s essentially the same as 2OI except that there isn’t a known process to discover the blind spots, the mines in the mine sweeper board. Not only do I not know what I don’t know, but I also don’t know how to go about discovering what I don’t know I don’t know. It’s like it’s a 4th dimension that I can’t access. 

4OI – “Meta Ignorance”. You are blissfully unaware.