When I was a brand new Flight Instructor I learned a lot from my first student. He was a nuclear engineer getting his Private Pilots license. He said,” If you don’t know the answer to something I ask, don’t BS me. We can learn it together.” To this day I’m always learning.
““I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer, unless perhaps you’re getting paid to know the answers, and then maybe “I don’t know” isn’t your best response.”
I’m going to argue that if you don’t know the answer it’s always better to say you don’t know. After years as a consultant, where I was sort of being paid to know the answers, I saw way too many people pretend to know the answer when they didn’t and it always was a disservice.
When I was working as a Charge Nurse if someone asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to I would say, “I don’t know but let me find out for you”. As you said, we can’t know everything.
When I was a brand new Flight Instructor I learned a lot from my first student. He was a nuclear engineer getting his Private Pilots license. He said,” If you don’t know the answer to something I ask, don’t BS me. We can learn it together.” To this day I’m always learning.
““I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer, unless perhaps you’re getting paid to know the answers, and then maybe “I don’t know” isn’t your best response.”
I’m going to argue that if you don’t know the answer it’s always better to say you don’t know. After years as a consultant, where I was sort of being paid to know the answers, I saw way too many people pretend to know the answer when they didn’t and it always was a disservice.
I use this often in my sometimes complex world. 😊
That is a great question that warrants a great response. Let me work on that and get back to you.
When I was working as a Charge Nurse if someone asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to I would say, “I don’t know but let me find out for you”. As you said, we can’t know everything.
Oh, that's a perfect story for this post, and exactly my point. Thanks for sharing that!