5 Brutal Truths About Power BI I Wish Someone Told Me on Day One.

Stop wasting time on dashboards that nobody trusts or uses.

Author

Glenda Carnate
September 27, 2025

Read time: 2.5 minutes

Power BI looks simple on the surface. Drag, drop, click, and suddenly you have dashboards that “wow” your team. But the reality is brutal. DAX formulas will frustrate you, slow dashboards will kill adoption, refresh failures will ruin your week, and without proper governance, nobody will trust your reports.

If you want to master Power BI and avoid rookie mistakes, you need to face these five brutal truths that most users only learn the hard way.

Brutal Truth #1 – DAX Will Break You:

Fact: Power BI users often struggle with DAX and data modeling due to their complexity and steep learning curve. (Medium, 2025)
Reality Check: DAX is not Excel. Thinking it is leads to frustration and wrong results.
Fix: Learn the context before writing formulas. Focus on proper functions like DIVIDE(SUM(Sales), SUM(Quantity)) instead of SUM(Sales)/SUM(Quantity).

Brutal Truth #2 – Your Model Matters More Than Your Charts:

Fact: A strong data model is crucial. Inconsistencies can cause performance issues and inaccurate results. (Multishoring, 2024)
Reality Check: Pretty visuals on a bad model = garbage insights.
Fix: Use clean, star-schema models rather than tangled joins. Your model drives the reliability of your dashboards.

Brutal Truth #3 – Refresh Failures Will Ruin Your Week:

Fact: Even the most insightful dashboard will fail if it loads slowly or refreshes inconsistently. (Medium, 2025)
Reality Check: Refresh errors are the #1 cause of Power BI frustration.
Fix: Implement incremental refresh and test your schedules early. Refresh only what is necessary to save time and resources.

Brutal Truth #4 – Slow Dashboards = Dead Dashboards:

Fact: Less than half of BI initiatives gain adoption, with poor dashboard design as the leading barrier. (Blue Margin, 2024)
Reality Check: Users abandon reports that take too long to load. Five seconds is the limit.
Fix: Remove calculated columns, optimize DAX, and push heavy logic upstream to make dashboards lightning fast.

Brutal Truth #5 – No Governance = No Trust:

Fact: Lack of proper data governance can expose organizations to data breaches and other threats. (The CRO Club, 2025)
Reality Check: Different versions of truth destroy credibility and waste time reconciling numbers.
Fix: Use certified datasets, naming rules, and assign data owners to maintain trust across teams.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Learn DAX context before writing formulas to avoid frustration.

  2. Build a clean, star-schema model; visuals alone do not ensure accurate insights.

  3. Test refresh schedules and use incremental refresh to save time and prevent failures.

  4. Optimize dashboards for speed; slow reports lead to low adoption.

  5. Implement governance with certified datasets and clear ownership to maintain trust and confidence.

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