your first paragraph has a nice piece of irony

Well spotted. I hadn't noticed the inconsistancy. I guess my desire to point out that not only "I am the best" types suffer from this "I can do no wrong" syndrome overruled my logical facilites enough to overlook the fact that if most of the former are also the latter then the your base point was valid. I should know better than to not think my reasoning through before I post. :-)

Although I do think its a mistake to focus on the bighead aspect and its more productive to look at why people sometimes get themselves in a head space where they take no responsibility for their errors. I think that perhaps even attacking the latter syndrome probably ends up reducing the former. I think actually that one of the links you posted (excellent reads by the way, the Forbes one got printed out given to some people at work, in my company the Level 5 analysis is particular pertinent) said much the same thing. (Teaching people more about a domain leads them to more accurately predict how much they dont know.)

Once again many thanks for yet another stimulating node. Please keep posting!