When writing an essay (applies to both opinion piece as well as factual ones), remember to clearly portray the epistemic humilityEpistemic Humility: Recognizing the fragility of your epistemic confidence i.e., you (can) only know so much, that is required of the subject in hand, in your writing. My observation has been that writing essays involve introduction of at least some amount of ontological dust that sprouts from past vague encounters or influences that you cannot remember. You cannot willingly avoid your perceptions and thoughts, but what you can definitely do is direct them to a more neutral ground by showing what you know is not all of it.
See Related: Humility is the knowing of the epistemic gapHumility is the knowing of the epistemic gap
Humility is the knowing that you don't know a lot of things not a false pretension to deceive people into praising you.
The contemporary view of humility seems to be to pretend as if one knew little instead of realizing it. Here fake it till you make it doesn't seem to work as, the more you pretend to be humble without realizing how little you know—not relatively, but absolutely—-the ego grows by holding onto the relative superiority.
Most of the issue of not understanding the fragility of ...
References
Raghuveer S. (2018). Journal Entry