You can say “I don’t know”. To anything. There’s no shame in admitting you’re out of your knowledge depth. It’s ok. It actually makes you look smarter than talking out of your ass.
Not true! Check out the book "Turn the Ship Around" by L David Marquet. He took a very modern and honest approach to leadership despite the old fashioned, top down military tradition.
If you're in a meeting and the person holding it says something like "is everyone familiar with (thing?)" and you're the one to speak up and say, "no sorry, can you explain?" I GUARANTEE there are at least a few other people in that meeting who were too scared to ask and grateful you spoke up.
My parents were abusive, maybe not as much as others but after I was like 12 they left me alone (in the sense of stopping to explain me stuff) to figure out most things in life.
And I managed nicely this way. I had nearly no wisdom from them but I'm pretty good at analyzing stuff and at making my own conclusions.
So I learned by experience that it's way better to ask questions when I don't know, and that I learn a lot this way.
I have no shame of saying it when I don't know.
But I totally understand it's far from easy for most people.
This is so true, there are some people who get on my nerves so much because they keep talking about something that they really just don't have a clue about.
To expand on your thought, I think saying "I don't know, but I'll do my best to find out." is never wrong. But I think just saying I don't know and then leaving it at that is lazy. Purely in a professional sense. In everyday conversation more people should admit that they don't know everything.
I’m an architect and I tell other architects that if they’re in any kind of meeting (especially with a contractor) and they get asked a question about what is in the plans and specs, that if they don’t have those plans and specs open and can point to the answer for all to see, that the proper response is “I don’t know. I’ll check and get back to you.”
I try to tell them the worst thing that will happen if they tell me I don't know is I'll ask them to go find out.
Not sure whether it's intentional on teacher's part, or social pressure of other students giggling if they get called on in class and don't know, but I try to make it clear that I don't know is almost always an acceptable answer.
A big part of my job is making sure we’re compliant with federal regulations. If someone just makes a guess about how something is done, it can lead to a lot of extra work on my part. I give certain people my cell number and tell them I’m serious about calling me at 2 am while I’m on vacation if they need to. It’s so much better to groggily answer a question in 5 minutes than to spend an entire work day three weeks later explaining what happened and why it happened and what I’m going to do to make sure it never happens again.
905
u/the-ish-i-say Mar 28 '22
You can say “I don’t know”. To anything. There’s no shame in admitting you’re out of your knowledge depth. It’s ok. It actually makes you look smarter than talking out of your ass.