Ask HN: How do you say “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you” confidently?

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.

Lots of different possible scenarios here, but this is a super common thing in business.

A couple of pointers:

1) Make sure you understand what they really want. It is common for a person to ask "can your hardware run on 12V", for example. But what they really want to know is something like "can I use this on my solar powered RV that will be parked in a 122F desert". This is just one of a billion examples from my career. You need to determine things like do they mean a stable 12.000V from a power supply, or a really variable 12VDC vehicle system that can range from 11-15V commonly. And then there is the whole ruggedness of the hardware issue. You need to be able to look ahead a bit and often assume the person isn't really asking the question they want an answer to.

2) The best way to be successful in business is to predict the future :) By this I mean determine how to set achievable expectations. If you feel confident that you can get an answer by COB, then state that and do it (predict the future, make it come true).

3) Communicate commitment and honesty. It is ok to tell someone you don't know, but you can say this in a lot of ways. Depending on all the variables, saying something like "this seems possible, but I need to check with X", or "I believe we did something similar for another situation, let me get more data internally and get back to you by tomorrow morning", etc.

If you want to setup a coaching session I'm happy to do a 30 minute zoom/whatever.

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...

Confidence does not come from finding the right words. Confidence comes from saying it confidently--basically, from knowing that you mean it, and that if questioned about what you mean you will have followups and answers. Basically from asserting that your version of reality is correct, in the face of others questioning it.

If you're actually confident about your version of reality, you can say it in any words you want and it will seem confident and stand up to scrutiny.

"I'll have to have a think about it and get back to you."

or, similar

"That's needs some thought. I'll get back to you about it."

.

I think there's no avoiding "I'll get back to you" or something substantially similar. After all, the whole point is to tell them that that's what you're going to do.

But "I don't know" is the bit I think you have a problem with. It seems to suggest that someone else would know: if only they were here, they would be able to just "look up" the answer from the right corner of their brain. But you want to communicate that this is a problem that actually needs solving, whoever is doing it. "needs thought" is the best I can think of for that.

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 just say that: "I don't know, but I'll get back to you [today/after the meeting/after my current task/whatever]."

Or if it's another developer and it would be useful: "I don't know, but let's find out." (and then we can look at the code together).

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.

What you're doing is perfectly fine and normal. If necessary, confidently walk through the steps you'll take to research the problem, especially if you have any idea of the soft resources (other people, internal docs) you'll need. Now you're communicating the process of task estimation to both the asker and any juniors in the room. This can really help managers to calibrate their own expectations of the work involved, which helps them to "spend your expertise" more wisely.

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.

You know, my honest but also meta answer is that I don't know the answer to your question.

There's a lot to unpack here and I don't know you well enough to give personalized advice. But this problem kinda requires personalized advice.

> in a way that doesn’t make it seem like I can’t be trusted that I know what I’m doing.

Why do you feel this way? I can think of several possibilities:

1.) You really really want the ability to know the answer instantly. While your mind know that's not reasonable, your heart is disappointed. As a result, your body language sends the message you don't know what you're doing.

2.) Verbal interactions are tough and you're looking for the right canned phrase that will give you time to think. However, that canned phrase sounds practiced, and people mistake it for a canned i-dont-care response.

3.) You want to people to understand why you don't instantly have an answer. As a result, you provide far too much justification, which winds up sounding guilty.

Personally, I have had great success with encounters where I absolutely don't know the answer, and I barely know where to start. Charlie asks me a question. I reply "I don't know, but Bob might know!" We ask Bob, and he doesn't want to be bothered, but he does know that Fred should know the answer. We then go to Fred, and I pay attention as the other two talk. I learn about Fred, a new topic, and Charlie winds up thanking me the most. In the future, Charlie comes to me first instead of Bob or Fred, and I wind up learning more than Bob and Fred put together.

It wasn't about how I said it, it was about putting in the effort to be present. And then people remembered I'd actually put the effort in.

Hard to know without more context. It depends a lot on the trust between you and the asker. You'll be confident if you can tell that you are fulfilling their expectations on the whole. If that's not the case, it may be because the expectations are extravagant, or because reasonable expectations are not being met. What to do will depend strongly on the details.

That aside, I find it is useful to say a bit about what is involved in answering the question. "We haven't calculated that figure, but I can work it out based on these other measurements we have." "I don't know off hand. I know X colleague has some experience with that aspect, I'll check with them." "That's a little bit subtle because it might conflict with this other feature, I'll have to do refresh my memory." "That is relatively simple to do, I'll put it at the top of my list for when this meeting is over." (Of course, these also depend on the kind of question).

I used to work for a consulting firm and one of my fellow consultants, a guy who went on to some measure of nerd fame as a DevOps evangelist, used to set up his consultations by saying "I don't know everything but I work for a company that does. If won't have an answer for every question, but I'll get an answer for you if you give me time."

That doesn't match your context perfectly, but I think it does communicate the importance of managing expectations.

I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I'm also not above changing my thoughts once I've examined a situation in detail. So when asked a question on the fly, I'll respond "my gut tells me X, Y, and Z but I'd like to think about it a bit and get back to you". If you do that, it's important that you follow up with some real thought and structure that provide real value. The confidence comes not in how you ask for time to think, but in your audience knowing your followup will be worth their while.

I don't care that a person knows how to do everything on the spot, I care that a) they do it eventually and b) they do it well.

If you say "I'll look and get back to you", the only way I'll think badly of you is if you never get back to me.

It can be helpful to restate the framing of the question /problem beforehand to clarify, reduce room for misunderstandings, communicate that you care enough to get it right, and also buy yourself time to maybe come up with an answer on the fly. Sometimes an extra minute or two is enough to come up with something good.

I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you." is fine. If you're really anxious, you can say "I want to give you a good answer, so let me think on this and get back to you. Is an email/slack convenient for you or should we reconvene at <datetime>?"

I have a customer facing role, then it's easy to get questions about details that I don't know from the customers. My approach is easy: always being very transparent. I can say "I am not 100% sure, then I will verify with my colleagues and with R&D and let you know" or just "I don't know right now, but I am taking notes and let you know ASAP". This approach also helps me to ask the right questions to the customer, just to understand what the customer wants.

I was on the other side for years and I hate when consultants try to avoid the questions or give me foggy replies.

In the situations you mentioned, it doesn't seem the end goal is to be 100% correct about things. Approaching these situations with a curious mindset is key. You may be able to provide a set of options that encompass your understanding of the thing being asked without pinning yourself down to a specific outcome. Once you've allowed folks to understand the potential options, you can tell them you can get back to them with specifics and understanding of implications.

I try to give a clear timeframe of when I’ll get back.

I agree that when people say "I'll have to get back to you" it sounds a little less than inspiring. In the military, we always called that "taking a look up" or a "due out," but it helps to be able to articulate well at the time why you can't give a more complete answer (ie what data you need to look up).

This is not a matter of confidence, it’s a matter of process

Every meeting should have notes. These notes include follow-up items that were raised in the course of the meeting

So someone asks a question you don’t have an immediate answer to? Add it to the list of follow-ups and say we will chase that down and close it out

In german the usual saying in meetings is, literally translated „I can‘t say anything about that (optional: at the present moment)“.

That sentence is widely accepted as a substitute for „I don‘t know“, but at the same time doesn‘t hold the same conclusion, since there could be a myriad of reasons why you can‘t say anything about a topic.

"It sounds like it could be xyz, but let me double check and I'll let you know in a few/hour/day/"

OR

"No clue. Let me do some digging first."

Have literally never had this come up in my ten years working in tech. Big picture advice? Don't overthink small things like this.

You'll just make yourself feel and act more unconfident not less.

Leave out the "I don't know". Change it to, be "Good question. I'll get back to you."

At the beginning of my career I was shitting my pants when I had to respond with "I don't know". But the more experience you have the easier it gets. Eventually you will observe that such response does not bring any bad outcomes.

FWIW I usually respond with "let me consult this with my team".

Learn from the former white house press secretary. She was effortless doing this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIxdbJOXnQ

Ask follow up questions to nail down the problem. Either the problem will become trivial and you can answer it, or they'll realize it's not as simple as they thought, and then you can say:

"I'd be happy to look into that. It'll require x, y, and z. I'll let you know what I find."

"My first instinct is that it will go this way. However that is just a first guess. In order to give you a proper answer I need to spend some time looking into it. Would this be appropriate? What is the deadline?

Exactly as you put it, but with a date. "I'll get back to you within 3 days." If that's not possible, provide a date for a date: "I'll know by Tuesday when that will be ready."

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.

I don’t know, let me take a look into it and I’ll get back to you [when]

Tell them you can look into it for them, and then ask them to provide you with a Work Package # to which you can bill your time.

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

Being able to say that in the first place already shows confidence.

"I don't know off hand, but I'll have a better answer for you in X mins/hours/days."

> 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.

It sounds like you're suffering from imposter syndrome. I promise you, no one thinks about you nearly as much as you think about you.

By the time you uttered the words, your team's mind has already moved on to something else.

Say the words and then follow up later.

Tough question. Honestly I'll have to think about it a bit. I'll post a follow up comment shortly.

If you've got a notebook with you, make a note that you need to find out, and who you have to tell, so that you actually do what you say you will.

But as others have said, I think you're overthinking this. I would far rather you tell me that you don't know but will find out, than have you make something up.

"this requires some investigation. I can check X, Y and Z"

Or if you want to not do it: "this requires some investigation. X person or Y team is best place to look into it"

How much do you know? One of my strongest things as somebody who's looked to as a person who knows a lot, is that I will immediately go to 'I don't know' when asked that sort of question. I don't even make an additional promise, I just stop at 'I don't know'.

With your emphasis on 'confidently', it sounds like you're looking at social consequences. I find that stopping the conversation with 'I don't know' and getting on with what I'm doing, socially 'reads' as authoritative. I'm sure part of it is my lack of equivocation: if I went 'I'll get back to you, I promise I swear I'll be able to know eventually, soon, I promise, pinky swear I will honest!' there would obviously be no authority, I'd be grovelling.

I could probably double down, unethically. 'I don't know, what a stupid question, why would you even ask that malformed question, that's not a real question'. I think that would lead to suspicion, though.

'I don't know' can be a power move, if you HAVE the confidence to mean it and let it lie there. I guess that's the answer. "I don't know. This is what I'm actively doing now…" This relies very much on there being many things you do know…

"I don't have enough information to give you an answer at this time. But i will look into it and will get back to you on that as soon as i can."

'Let me get back to you on that in 30 minutes/tomorrow/a week' (depending on the complexity of the question at hand).

"That's a good question, let me do some research and I'll get back to you"

"I don't know, but I'll get back to you" calmly.

'I don't know, but I'll get back to you?'

you can add the reasons why the question is more complex than it seems

nothing worse than people pretending to know when they don't

I was a consultant for many years. You can definitely buy yourself time (see below), but always make sure you understand why the question is being asked, and how your answer will be used. Sometimes people just ask questions in meetings to sound important.

• If it's theoretically possible to answer:

  "You know, that is such a great question, and I want to be able to give you a thoughtful answer. Let me take it offline and get back to you tomorrow with [a concrete plan|my recommendations|a few options|a potential solution]."

  "That would be interesting to see! I could probably crunch that for you in ___ days/hours. Right now I'm currently working on ____. Should I put that work on pause while I get the answer for you?" or

  "I'd have to spend a little time to dig into that. Should we add it to the backlog?"

  "Fair question, but it's a bit more nuanced than you might think, so I'd like to look at it more closely. If I answer now, you're just getting my own bias."

  "Oh, I hadn't considered that. Can you give me a little insight about the reason for the question? I'd love to know what's behind your interest in ____." or

  "Ah, interesting. Are you just asking out of curiosity, or is there a deeper reason for the question?" or

  "Wow, I would be curious to know the answer to that too. Why do you ask?"

  "You know, I am honestly flattered that you think I would know that off the top of my head, but I'm actually a big believer in documentation and researching best practices. I can check for you."

  "We can certainly get an answer on that, but just so I know how best to respond, can you help me understand how this will be used as an input? Put another way, what's the action or behavior this will change?"

  "It's a good question, but I get the sense that you already have an idea in mind. What are your thoughts?"

  "I get it, it's frustrating. Before I answer, do you want to press pause and talk about what's really going on?" or

  "Happy to answer, but if this is about me or my performance, why don't we take it offline so you can give me some feedback 1:1."