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

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.

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.

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.

As far as how to do it confidently? The same way you say "that is a tree" when you're looking at a tree. You're 100% sure you don't know, just say it. The rest is probably in your head. That's been my experience at least.