The question hung in the air like smoke.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. You were sitting in a conference room with your biggest potential client. The air conditioning was humming. The projector fan was whirring. And the CEO of the client company was looking directly at you.

She had just asked a technical question about your integration capabilities. It was a specific question about legacy database compatibility.

You did not know the answer.

In that split second your brain went into panic mode. The adrenaline hit your system. You felt the heat rise in your neck. A voice in your head started screaming that you should know this. You are the owner. You are the manager. You are the expert.

If you say you do not know you look weak. You look unprepared. You look like you do not belong in the room.

So you did the dangerous thing.

You guessed.

You nodded confidently and said Yes we can handle that specific format.

The CEO smiled. She wrote it down. The meeting moved on. You exhaled. You survived the moment.

But you did not survive. You just planted a time bomb in the foundation of your business relationship. Three weeks later that bomb is going to go off when your engineering team tells you that the integration is actually impossible without a six month rewrite.

Now you are a liar.

Now the contract is dead.

Now your team is scrambling to clean up a mess that never should have existed.

We need to talk about why we guess. We need to dismantle the fear that drives us to bluff. And we need to replace it with a phrase that is arguably the most powerful tool in a leader’s arsenal.

I don’t know, but I will find out.

The Psychology of the Bluff

Why do we do it? Why do intelligent, rational business leaders gamble their reputation on a coin toss?

It usually stems from a deep seated insecurity known as the Expert’s Fallacy.

We believe that our value is derived from our inventory of facts. We think we are paid to be a walking encyclopedia of our industry. When someone asks a question and we come up empty we feel a sudden devaluation of our worth.

We feel like imposters.

The brain interprets this social pressure as a physical threat. The amygdala activates. The fight or flight response kicks in. In this context, bluffing is the fight response. We fight the reality of our ignorance with a shield of false certainty.

But this is a misunderstanding of what leadership actually is.

Your value is not your encyclopedic knowledge. Your value is your ability to navigate the unknown. Your value is your resourcefulness.

When you guess you are prioritizing your ego over the truth. You are prioritizing your comfort in the present moment over the success of the project in the future.

It is a selfish act.

When you realize that guessing is actually a form of cowardice it becomes much easier to stop doing it. It becomes easier to choose the harder, more honest path.

The High Cost of Operational Debt

When you guess you create something called operational debt.

Imagine a manager named Sarah. Her team asks her if the budget covers a new software tool. She is busy. She does not want to check the spreadsheet. She assumes there is wiggle room. She says yes.

The team buys the tool. They implement it. They build their workflow around it.

Two months later the finance department flags the overage. The tool has to be cut. The team has to dismantle their workflow. They lose days of productivity. They lose trust in Sarah.

A five second guess created five days of cleanup work.

This happens in every department. Salespeople guess about features. Developers guess about user requirements. Founders guess about legal regulations.

This debt accumulates. It clogs the gears of your business. You end up spending more time undoing false starts than you do making progress.

Accuracy is speed.

It often feels slower to stop and look up the answer. It feels tedious to say Let me get back to you on that. But in the long run it is infinitely faster because you never have to do the work twice.

The Two Part Protocol

So how do we fix this? We cannot just go around shrugging our shoulders. Saying “I don’t know” and staring blankly is incompetence.

The magic lies in the second half of the sentence.

I will find out.

This transforms the interaction. It changes you from a person who lacks knowledge to a person who has agency. It signals to your team and your clients that you are a problem solver.

But you have to be specific. You have to treat the act of finding out as a project in itself. Here is the framework for the perfect response.

1. The Admission State clearly that you do not have the answer. Do not use weasel words. Do not say “I am pretty sure.” Just say “I do not know.”

2. The Plan Explain exactly how you are going to get the answer. “I need to check the API documentation” or “I need to consult with our lead engineer.”

3. The Timeline Give a specific time when you will return with the truth. “I will email you by 5 PM today.”

It sounds like this.

I do not know the specific limitations of that legacy database. I need to run a test with my technical lead to be 100% sure. We will run that test this afternoon and I will send you a one page summary of the results by tomorrow morning.

Analyze that statement.

Is it weak? No. It is incredibly strong. It shows that you value accuracy. It shows you have a process. It shows you are in control.

Most importantly it builds massive trust. When you come back the next day with the answer the client knows they can believe you. They know that if there was a problem you would have told them.

You have proven that your “Yes” means “Yes” because you were willing to say “I Don’t Know”.

Teaching Resourcefulness

Once you have mastered this yourself you have to instill it in your team. You have to make it safe for them to not know.

If you berate your employees when they do not have an immediate answer they will learn to lie to you. They will guess to avoid your anger.

You want to reward the hunt.

When a team member says they do not know, ask them the next question.

“Okay, where would we look to find out?”

Guide them through the investigation. Do we check the manual? Do we call a vendor? Do we look at the competitors?

You are teaching them how to fish. You are teaching them that the answer is always out there if they are willing to do the work to find it.

This is where true confidence comes from. Confidence is not knowing all the answers. Confidence is knowing that you have the skills to find any answer given enough time and effort.

There is a specific danger here though. You have to watch out for the “lazy ask.”

This is when an employee asks you a question that they could have easily Googled. This is not admitting ignorance; this is offloading work.

Your response to this should be “What have you tried so far?”

If they have tried nothing send them back to the hunt. If they have tried three things and are still stuck then help them.

We want to build a culture of detectives, not a culture of guessers or dependents.

The Relief of Truth

Let’s go back to that conference room. The AC is still humming. The CEO is still looking at you.

She asks the question about the legacy database.

You pause. You take a breath. You look her in the eye.

“That is a critical question and I want to make sure I give you the exact right answer. I do not know the technical specs of that specific version off the top of my head. I am going to check with my CTO immediately after this meeting and I will confirm with you via email by end of day.”

The CEO nods.

“Thank you,” she says. “I appreciate you checking.”

The tension leaves the room. You did not just survive the moment. You won the moment.

You established that you are a partner who cares about the details. You established that you will not bullshit her.

Building a business is hard enough without the house of cards that guessing creates. It is exhausting to keep track of all the half truths and assumptions.

When you commit to radical intellectual honesty you can sleep better. You don’t have to worry about which lies are going to catch up with you.

You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.

You just have to be the most honest researcher.

That is a foundation you can build on.