The world won’t end if you say “I don’t know”

Probably. I don’t know for sure.

Published in

Designing Humans

4 min readNov 23, 2017

As kids, a lot of us learn to be afraid of not knowing the answer. I actually burst into tears whenever the teacher asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to.

Dramatic, I know.

But it was embarrassing.

And so very wrong to condition kids to fear a simple phrase like “I don’t know.”

Only when I grew up and became a UX designer did I learn that I need not be afraid to say, “I don’t know.”

“UX design is not about knowing the right answers. It’s about finding them.”

You know plenty. But not everything.

“I don’t know” is a pretty smart thing to say. It means that you are about to get even smarter.

Embrace your ignorance, and take time to form an opinion.

Yes, it will be scary…

When I was young, 2 things prepared me for admitting that I don’t know everything:

“Ignorance is very important! It is an absolutely essential step in the learning process!” — Solomon Einstein in Terry Pratchett’s Johnny and the Dead
“The only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.” — My mom (I don’t know if she coined it)

Yet, I still find myself smiling and nodding and pretending to know the answer when I don’t.

Why though?

Because I’m afraid of sounding stupid.

In school, there was a premium on knowing the right answers.

At work, there’s an expectation that you know what you’re doing. You’re getting paid for it, dammit.

But it gets easier.

I started becoming more comfortable to say “I don’t know” when I started doing UX research.

It’s the perfect “I don’t know”-training-wheels. It taught me to be less afraid to admit that I don’t know the answer… yet.
It’s a safe space to fail in. It revolves around failure and learning from it.

Why should you say it more?

At first, I didn’t know why I should even attempt to say “I don’t know” out loud to other people.

But then, I looked for answers. And I found most of them in The Power of “I Don’t Know” by Saga Briggs.

You’ll learn something new. Pretending you know the answer means that you’ll never get this opportunity.
You’ll build relationships. People like to teach other people, so indulge your peer or colleague the next time you don’t know the answer and they do.
You’ll avoid complacency. Realising you don’t know the answer, and planning to do something about it, is one of the keys to successful self-driven learning.
You’ll stimulate engagement. When one person admits they don’t know, others feel more at ease to speak up.
You’ll remain open-minded. When we keep our minds shut tight, we end up making a lot of assumptions about life, many of which could be dead wrong.
You’ll build thinking skills. When we’re unsure whether we know something or not, we spend more mental effort to try to figure it out.
You’ll practise intellectual humility. Stop trying to be right all the time…
You’ll improve credibility. When you admit you don’t know to someone else, they’ll find it easier to trust you when you do. If you keep on pretending to know and end up being wrong too many times, your credibility will suffer.
You’ll pursue meaningful problems. The deeper you delve into an issue for answers, the closer you get to that kernel of truth.
You’ll gain confidence. It may seem counter-intuitive, but you’ll only gain more confidence in yourself if you remain aware of what you do and don’t know.
(Another reason I feel it should be said more, based on my own experience as a kid…) You’ll help teach our kids to be lifelong learners. They don’t deserve to feel scared of not knowing the right answer like we did.