"Expert judgment depends on exposure to consequences, not credentials.
In a customer escalation where the facts are still changing, the conversation keeps returning to what you do not know. The practical question is what you will do anyway.
When the decision stays implicit, the system still commits—by drift, escalation, or whoever speaks last. You see it in a dashboard interpreted as confirmation because the plan has momentum, where the first clear call happens after the cost has already been paid. Make the boundary explicit enough that a peer could disagree with it; if no one can disagree, no one can defend it under pressure.
Name the signal that ends the attempt and the action you will take when it appears. That is how you turn stress into clarity instead of theater. Be calm and explicit.