What does it mean to “finesse the obvious” in a special occasion speech?

Answer:

The phrase “finesse the obvious” is referring to how you connect with the audience about possibly shared information. In other words, if you are speaking about a person that the audience already knows well you do not want to insult them by making it seem like they do not know the person at all. You do not want to leave out the obvious information though because not everyone may know that person as well as the others. In this case you would want to include phrases like “as we all know” or “it goes wit out saying” so you can still say the obvious information about the person and the people in the audience who also know the person well will not be offended and the few that do not know the person so well will learn more about them.