 Because Shawn isn't an official detective, he often has to resort to stealing, withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence and witnesses, breaking and entering and numerous other crimes in order to solve a crime.Despite his high intelligence, Shawn does appear to have a poor grasp of history and other fields (assigned to write about a U.S. President, he wrote a paper on the fictional character from the movie "Dave" who he thought was real).He is also chided by Henry for not knowing all the details of a case beforehand (in one episode, Shawn is about to accuse an innocent man of murder before Henry stops him and reveals a detail Shawn would know from the case file he didn't read).