“I Don’t Know” Is Not a Weakness

We're conditioned to always know why, but that doesn’t mean we always do. When we don’t, we’re not even admitting this to ourselves. We act as if we do, and we come up with any story to prove that we do.

Let’s look at why this is:

1. Education: We were taught to know stuff; we were graded on what we knew, and we received bad grades for not knowing. Our grades changed the trajectory of our lives — good grades to the better, bad grades to the worse. Not knowing was, therefore, punished.
2. Work: We’re hired as experts. Experts know stuff. The experts who don’t know stuff get fired because they are useless. I.e., not knowing is punished yet again.

We’ve internalized this lesson so well: By now, not knowing is treated as a personality weakness. We must have been stupid, or lazy, or both, not to learn something we should’ve known. And for that, we will be punished.

No wonder then that when we don’t know something, we default to immediately coming up with a story that proves the opposite. And we don’t even stop to think and realize that we actually don’t know — and maybe the world won’t end because of that. Covering up is a built-in reflex.

That’s why your team will lie to you every time you ask a question that they don’t know. They won’t lie intentionally, but you will be misled nonetheless. And it won’t happen just once or twice — it will always happen.

To change that, you have to build a company culture where not knowing is not punished — not in any way: not in the smallest, and not in the biggest. But cultural changes start from the top — with you. Are you punishing yourself for not knowing?