An articulated guess beats an unspoken assumption
Frederick Brooks
A point that Fred Brooks makes in his recent work the Design of Design is that it’s wiser to explicitly make specific assumptions, even if that entails guessing the values, rather than leave the assumption un-stated and vague because ‘we just don’t know’. Brooks notes that while specific and explicit assumptions may be questioned, implicit and vague ones definitely won’t be. If a critical aspect of your design rests upon such fuzzy unarticulated assumptions, then the results can be dire.
Critical Uncertainties 