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

At the beginning of my career I was shitting my pants when I had to respond with "I don't know". But the more experience you have the easier it gets. Eventually you will observe that such response does not bring any bad outcomes.

FWIW I usually respond with "let me consult this with my team".

Hard to know without more context. It depends a lot on the trust between you and the asker. You'll be confident if you can tell that you are fulfilling their expectations on the whole. If that's not the case, it may be because the expectations are extravagant, or because reasonable expectations are not being met. What to do will depend strongly on the details.

That aside, I find it is useful to say a bit about what is involved in answering the question. "We haven't calculated that figure, but I can work it out based on these other measurements we have." "I don't know off hand. I know X colleague has some experience with that aspect, I'll check with them." "That's a little bit subtle because it might conflict with this other feature, I'll have to do refresh my memory." "That is relatively simple to do, I'll put it at the top of my list for when this meeting is over." (Of course, these also depend on the kind of question).

I was a consultant for many years. You can definitely buy yourself time (see below), but always make sure you understand why the question is being asked, and how your answer will be used. Sometimes people just ask questions in meetings to sound important.

• If it's theoretically possible to answer:

  "You know, that is such a great question, and I want to be able to give you a thoughtful answer. Let me take it offline and get back to you tomorrow with [a concrete plan|my recommendations|a few options|a potential solution]."

• If it's impossible to answer in the moment (you need to access data or run a report):

  "That would be interesting to see! I could probably crunch that for you in ___ days/hours. Right now I'm currently working on ____. Should I put that work on pause while I get the answer for you?" or

  "I'd have to spend a little time to dig into that. Should we add it to the backlog?"

• If they're expecting an assessment/judgment/snap decision:

  "Fair question, but it's a bit more nuanced than you might think, so I'd like to look at it more closely. If I answer now, you're just getting my own bias."

• If it's something unexpected/random (happens often):

  "Oh, I hadn't considered that. Can you give me a little insight about the reason for the question? I'd love to know what's behind your interest in ____." or

  "Ah, interesting. Are you just asking out of curiosity, or is there a deeper reason for the question?" or

  "Wow, I would be curious to know the answer to that too. Why do you ask?"

• If it's a technical question, especially a "gotcha" question:

  "You know, I am honestly flattered that you think I would know that off the top of my head, but I'm actually a big believer in documentation and researching best practices. I can check for you."

• If you don't understand what they'll do with the answer:

  "We can certainly get an answer on that, but just so I know how best to respond, can you help me understand how this will be used as an input? Put another way, what's the action or behavior this will change?"

• If it sounds like they're fishing for a specific answer:

  "It's a good question, but I get the sense that you already have an idea in mind. What are your thoughts?"

• If it's an aggressive or hostile question:

  "I get it, it's frustrating. Before I answer, do you want to press pause and talk about what's really going on?" or

  "Happy to answer, but if this is about me or my performance, why don't we take it offline so you can give me some feedback 1:1."

Honestly the list is endless

Heh your oddly specific example in point 1 makes me smile. I'll just add "can it handle a voltage spike up to 60V for a second or two in the event of a load dump?" to the list of questions hidden in "can your hardware run on 12V?"

Definitely. Along with "How does it handle reverse polarity", or "will alternator noise affect anything", and a couple dozen other factors that all explode out of an innocently asked "Does it run on 12VDC".