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Comment by MFogleman | Hacker News Reader

  The three most powerful words for building credibility are "I don't know"

I had a supervisor once who always had an answer to your question. He was always 100% sure he was right. He was not always right. Consequently, going to him for help would sometimes result in the problem becoming worse.

The best supervisor I ever had was the one who routinely told me "I don't know, let me call {PersonInOtherDepartment}" or "See if the answer is in {RelevantManual} under {PossibleSection}. If you don't find it, give me a call."

We treat "I don't know" as an admission of failure far too often. It should be seen as an entry point to improvement.

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I had 2 team leads at one point - One of them would ALWAYS answer your question, and the other would sometimes say "I don't know/I have to research that/Let's look it up"

They both had the right answer about 95% of the time, but the one who said "I don't know" was only wrong about 1% of the time.

In my experience, saying "I don't know" outside of an academic environment leads to two consequences: 1) People will stop listening to you in preference to loud people who "know"; 2) Loud people who know will use your admission against you.

Sadly, the good habits that you learn in academia will come back to haunt you when you move into industry.

I doubt there are statistics on such things, so we'll have to deal in anecdotes, and I've had the total opposite experience (I make this comment so that any young people or academics aren't prematurely jaded). When a lot is at stake (e.g. high revenue, medicine, infrastructure, etc.), especially when a team has been burned by loud people, a person who says, "I don't know, but let's figure it out" (that's my job) is prized.

This is also my experience. I've heard the claims in this thread (i.e. that people who pretend to know things get ahead, while those who admit that they don't know stuff are never trusted) my entire life, but I've always thought, "who are these people talking about?"

Whenever I've worked with a blowhard who couldn't admit when they didn't know something literally everybody smart thought of them as a blowhard who couldn't admit when they didn't know something.

> literally everybody smart ...

Too bad this excludes so many managers, but really this is so much a company culture issue than anything. So to cite from the article: "very few companies are capable of making significant changes in their culture or business model, so it is good for companies eventually to go out of business, thereby opening space for better companies in the future."

The key is not saying "I don't know" and end the conversation. You should give advices on where to find the information needed and who is in a best position to answer.

I've done it plenty of times and my colleagues keep coming back to me when they need help.

This may be true, but doesn't make the loud person credible. Not even in the eyes of the people who are happy to listen to such person.

In the corporate world: completely agree.

I'm always ready to say I don't know. But just to advocate for the opposite -- it is perfectly OK to have an clear opinion, weakly held.

So, say what you think but at the same time ask (demand?) an argument or discussion.

A friend has a T-shirt with the words: Always sure, often wrong.

Also see: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/work-matters/201002/...

"Often wrong but never in doubt."

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