The Fastest Way to Sound Credible

Driving home last week, I got stuck at the light across from the volunteer fire station near my office. There was a firefighter crouched at the hydrant on the corner with a wrench, slowly unscrewing one of the side caps.

That's the whole event. A guy, a wrench, a cap.

I sat there watching him and realized I had no idea what he was doing or why. I've driven past that hydrant a thousand times and everything I know about fire hydrants fits in one sentence. Oh, and parking next to one costs about a hundred and fifty bucks.

By the time I pulled into my driveway I had a list of questions.

Who decides where a hydrant goes? Who replaces them when they wear out? Where does the water come from, and is it the same water that comes out of my kitchen tap?

I'm a person who gets paid to know things. And there I was, decades into a career built on knowing things, unable to explain an object I pass every single day on my way to work.

What surprised me was the feeling. I expected some flavor of embarrassment, but what I was feeling was closer to delight.

I had genuinely interesting questions.

Not knowing how hydrants work didn't make me less capable. It just meant there was something available to learn on a Tuesday afternoon. To me, that’s motivating.

It’s probably fair to say that’s not the reaction most of us have at work.

Somewhere on the way to becoming subject matter experts, a lot of us signed a quiet contract that said our value equals our answer rate. So when a question lands and we don't have it, we feel the pull.

Not to lie, exactly. Just to produce something. To fill the space where certainty is supposed to live.

Here's where I'll close the exit before you take it.

You're probably thinking you already do this, that you're comfortable admitting when you're out of your depth. Maybe.

But there's a difference between conceding ignorance after someone has cornered you and volunteering it while you still had the option to bluff. The first is damage control and the second is a signal about how seriously you treat accuracy.

Considering almost nobody bluffs outright, the real failure mode is subtler and nearly invisible: someone asks a question you can't answer, and you smoothly answer a slightly different question that you can. Everyone nods. The meeting moves on. The gap stays open, and now it has your fingerprints on it.

This is not a metaphor. We actually don't know.

Credit for an early design usually goes to Frederick Graff Sr., chief engineer of the Philadelphia Water Works around 1801. The problem is, a 1836 fire started in the basement of Blodgett's Hotel in Washington, which housed the Patent Office at the time, destroyed the records that might have confirmed it.

So the record of who solved the fire problem was destroyed by a fire.

What I find more instructive than the irony is how the careful people talk about it. Patent historians will tell you Graff is the likely candidate, and then they'll tell you there is no surviving proof that a hydrant patent existed before 1836 at all.

They keep the uncertainty attached to the claim.

That's not weak history. It's the only kind worth trusting, and it's how every durable body of knowledge has been built: by marking the gaps clearly enough that someone else can come fill them.

This probably feels obvious.
It is, at least when we're the ones trying to figure something out.

What's easier to miss is how much we rely on other people to mark the edges of what they know without ever consciously asking them to.

That's why I've become much less interested in having every answer and much more interested in handling the edge of what I know well.

Over the years, I've found myself returning to the same four moves.:

Let’s get it…

Precision about your limits makes everything inside them more believable. Say what you do know first, then mark exactly where it stops.

"I can tell you how we handled this the last two cycles and what the outcomes were. What I can't tell you yet is whether the new funding rules change any of it. Give me until Thursday to confirm."

You've just given a status report on your knowledge instead of a confession.

2. Don't stop at "I don't know."

"I don't know" on its own is a dead end, and people hear it as a shrug. "I don't know, and here's how I'll find out" is a plan. The three words are the setup, never the whole line.

"I don't know. I'll talk to Dana tomorrow and have you an answer by Thursday afternoon."

That turns a gap into a commitment with a date on it.

3. Go get the answer.

This is the move people skip, and skipping it is what makes the whole thing hollow. Curiosity that never cashes out is a more charming way of dropping the ball.

Put it somewhere real. I now keep a running list in my notes app called "things I pass every day and can't explain." Fifteen minutes on the hydrant question taught me that in most American cities, hydrants tap the same treated mains that feed your kitchen sink, which is why utilities care so much about backflow prevention. Purple hydrants are the exception, running reclaimed or non-drinking water that's fine for a fire and terrible for a glass.

Now I have something to say instead of a shrug.

4. Come back with what you learned.

Go find the person who watched you not know, and close the loop in front of them.

"You asked me about the vendor thresholds last week and I didn't have it. Here's what I found out, and here's the part that surprised me."

This shows the not-knowing was temporary. It also gives everyone else in the room permission to do the same thing, which is how a team stops performing certainty at each other.

The gap isn't the problem. Leaving it open is.

Most of the moments where this matters are unscripted.

Somebody asks the question you didn't prepare for, and you have about two seconds to decide whether you're going to be accurate or impressive.

If you want a toolkit for exactly those moments, the Impromptu Conversation Navigator was built for them.

Sometimes the fastest way to sound credible is to say "I Don't Know."

"I don't know" costs you nothing when it comes with a plan and a date.

Say it early, go get the answer, bring it back out loud.

Thanks for reading. Be easy!