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This paper aims to contribute to the literature on knowledge construction and knowledge sharing within the field of organizational communication. The research underlines the importance of exploring human learning contextually, descriptively, interpretively, and inductively. Through a participant‑observer methodological approach, the study contributes to the literature by introducing detrivialization as a strategy to explore ’participants’ rhetoric related to their organizational procedures. The paper describes a case study that took place for 18 months in a cancer research lab in Belgium, where employees seemed unable to question several taken‑for‑granted practices. The present research primarily reveals the consequences of trivialization, when the rationale of essential organizational practices go unnoticed until observer‑participant challenges the status quo. Also, the study highlights the outcomes of the detrivialization approach, which triggers unprecedented knowledge. Finally, the paper introduces the (de)trivialization dynamic model, which can depict the consequences of opening black‑boxes in organizational contexts. This research is a new approach in organizational ethnomethodology, revisiting ’Garfinkel’s (1967) breaching experiment to describe science in action. The suggested model offers a methodological approach for exploring trivialized organizational dynamics and challenging groupthink. Detrivialization is an opposite approach to trivialization, to offer a new debate topic to scholars aiming to conduct ethnographic research and discourse analysis in organizational communication.

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Within the framework of scientific argumentation, this study explores the role of what we here call the unstated argument in knowledge construction. The case study conducted in a cancer research lab in Brussels, uses observation, open interviews, and discourse analysis. Guided by Discursive Psychology as a theory and method, it examines the bases of a specific unstated argument embedded in tacit knowledge. The unstated argument is about medium usage in cancer research. The medium is a chemical liquid composed of a number of substances injected into the cells that scientists use to carry out experiments. The findings suggest that the unstated argument comprises a claim and de facto evidence. The claim is that the medium usage is appropriate and not problematic for research results. The evidence: (1) does not emanate from research; (2) is based on personal opinion; and (3) is backed up by the following factors: (a) practicing the status quo; (b) adhering to cancer-research standards; and (c) being bound by the demand and supply interplay. Provoked by the present study, counterevidence is ultimately substantiated by the same scientists. The counterevidence happens to challenge the claim, as it is based on expert-opinion. The study suggests that ethnography can offer a unique methodological stance to discern the unstated arguments embedded in tacit knowledge.