Ask HN: How do you say “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you” confidently?
In meetings im often asked to answer a question or solve a problem on the fly. I hate to do that because it doesn’t give me time to fully think through what needs to be done, the best way to do it, and any implications.
What I try to do is tell people I’ll take a look and get back to them. But I never found a good way to do it confidently, in a way that doesn’t make it seem like I can’t be trusted that I know what I’m doing. Particularly if they want me to do the task in front of them.
Any advice?
I try to make a clear distinction between:
1) Questions for which you can recall the answer off the top of the head, or by sharing an _existing_ note, document, link, etc.
2) "Questions" which cannot be immediately answered from memory / existing records, and are in fact a request to do _new work_, be it research, analysis, writing some document, etc. etc.
Hopefully, you are sufficiently well organized, keep notes, and anticipate obvious inquiries such that that many questions are of type #1. Think of those as L1 or L2 cache hits.
Then, for the remainder that are #2, you can say "sorry, I don't have anything to hand, haven't thought about that, but I could look into it and get back to you with something in X amount of time, if that's useful. should we create a ticket, and prioritize this alongside other priorities?".
The thing that will inspire confidence is not saying this all the time, but only for the non-#1 things, and that many things are #1 and get an immediate response.
It's also powerful to build these constructs into questions of other people. You could ask "Hey, Bob - I'm wondering, do you know, off the top of your head, where the code that does X is?".
Ideally, Bob can then say, "oh, yes, I was just looking at that yesterday, it's here: http://....", or alternatively "Hmm. Actually, no, sorry.".
An annoying non-answer would be "No, but it's probably in place X, because Y, or maybe it's Z, or it could be found using git history or blah blah blah..." - that's not helpful, because if it needs to _searched for_, you can do that just as well as Bob, the question was whether he had it _to hand_, not whether he could make some guesses about where it _could_ be...
Tell them that you are slow thinker and you need your time to think thoroughly so you can come back with answers.
If they don't believe you, tell them Derek Sivers, the CD Baby creator is also a slow thinker https://sive.rs/slow
The first to convince is yourself. What would you think of someone who says that? Do you think that the other person is incompetent? Unless you solve this, you won't appear confident.
Just like that, but offer a timeframe for a response. That is what builds trust and confidence.
You can also offer a "back of a napkin" answer if it's appropriate, but make it clear that you will give it the proper consideration and give a better considered answer. Maybe specify a large margin of error.
All that said, not everything requires rigor. In some cases, "fuzzy" answers are good enough. Learn to identify them and not to waste time giving less important things extra attention.
I say it exactly like that. "I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you."
They key isn't how you say it, the key is that you consistently do it so that people learn that when you say it, you mean it.
It is totally fine to just say it simple terms.
What will give you confidence is actually following up and getting back to people and closing the thread.
Then people will trust you as well.
Depends on the question, you could say something that validates the importance of the question or what you're trying to solve and say let me think this through further and I'll get back to you.
such questions are post to disqualify the candidate h. r. d. gimmick
I'm not following
"I don't know off hand, but I'll have a better answer for you in X mins/hours/days."
I like that, because you have framed when to expect an answer.
In addition, you need to write down the question, and to enforce your commitment, read it back to confirm. At the least if you do not read it back, email them what you think the question is.
'Let me get back to you on that in 30 minutes/tomorrow/a week' (depending on the complexity of the question at hand).