The Power of Saying "I Don't Know" | Hacker News Reader

The Power of Saying "I Don't Know"

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I've always found that it demonstrates security with one's intelligence to be able to admit ignorance. People that feel like they know a lot, but don't happen to know what you're talking about will freely admit to it. OTOH it's people that feel like they don't know enough and that think they should know something that will pretend they do.

It demonstrates confidence in the person admitting to not know something. NOBODY is comfortable sitting there admitting to not knowing one thing after another after another. People are a lot more comfortable admitting ignorance when they don't expect to have to do it often.

Beware of the other extreme.

I've seen organizations where this is the only "safe" answer and nothing gets done. Sometimes people say "I don't know" when they actually know enough to make a decision.

Sometimes they know enough to make a decision, but you have meeting after meeting with people who know nothing because the person who knows something couldn't make the meeting.

I also hate nailing down a definitive plan with one person, and then a week later somebody else takes over for them and schedules a meeting to start from scratch. So you send them the plan, and they say, "This is the first time I've seen this. Let me postpone the meeting for a week so I can review it."

The Truth really doesn't hurt! well said. I am an intern at an organization where everyone is about two decades older than me, and there is a lot I don't know. They don't know what they can expect me to know, and I don't know what they know. I send piles of questions out to anyone who has some spare time and have not once been chastised in return.

I remember one place where one guy - who was very experienced and a generally awesome developer had a rather unpleasant (i.e. plain rude) manner when asked worked questions even though he was generally quite pleasant about non-work topics.

He eventually admitted he did it on purpose so that people would explore every other solution to a problem before giving up and asking him (inevitably he would almost instantly know the answer - he was that kind of guy).

It sometimes sounds better to phrase "I don't know" along the lines of, "Let me check on that and get back to you."

In Navy ROTC 'boot camp,' it was verboten to respond "I don't know"; the only acceptable phrasing was "I'll find out, sir." (And the cadre followed up to make sure we did find out.)

This really depends. All you need is a manager that doesn't accept that as an answer and you start lying. I have one like that. If I say "I don't know" he just keeps asking me the question over and over. It's surreal for sure, but I learned to nod my head and agree so he can finally leave my office and stop eating an banana with his mouth open.

while talking as well

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