When you don’t know the Answer

There are many cases when we’ll be asked questions and we just don’t know how to respond. Knowing what is being asked and not knowing the answer is just one of many situations in which this can occur.

Technical Questions
Detailed & specific questions about your methods, results and conclusions that require intimate knowledge of how work was done.
Difficult Questions
Specific questions that require deep knowledge of a field to answer but are not unique to your work.
Exploratory Questions
Questions which may not be relevant are meant to prompt discussion and creative thinking.
Explanatory Questions
Questions designed to help the person asking solve a specific problem or help them to better understand new material.
Confusing Questions
Questions that are nonsensical, or questions that seem nonsensical but are actually quite insightful.

When you Should Know the Answer

There are some questions which you really do need to know the answer to, there’s just no getting around it. Luckily, they’re pretty straight-forward to identify. These are questions which only you can answer. This includes anything about specific settings of any parameters that you used in an experimental design. What choices did you make that are not standard and why did you make those choices? Or, what exactly did you do to get this result? These are things that perhaps your supervisor or colleagues will know and may answer for you, but unless they have actually done the work, you’re the only person who is really responsible for those choices.

These are typically Technical Questions.

These questions are not only easy to identify but they’re also things that you really should know as a responsible STEMian. We should be able to defend the choices that we made and explain what we actually did as far as possible.

Not Knowing the Answer

These are typically Difficult Questions or Exploratory Questions.

Whether in private or public, admitting that you don’t know the answer to a question can be difficult. I would argue that this is especially true for STEMians for which knowledge is held above all else. Admitting that you lack that knowledge, in particular in a specialty field seems like an embarrassment. Luckily, there are some ways of dealing with this situation.

First, we should be prepared to admit that we don’t know the answer. That you don’t know an answer to a question doesn’t invalidate your results (aside from technical questions, discussed above). It’s perfectly find to say “I don’t know”, which is the best answer to give if you really have no idea. But this doesn’t need to be the end of the conversation! You are always able to speculate on things related to the question that you do know about.

Not Understanding the Question

These are typically Confusing Questions

Distinct from understanding the question and just not knowing the answer, we may also find ourselves in a situation where we don’t actually understand what is being asked. Here are some points to consider if you feel you’ve found yourself in this situation.

Why is this question being asked?

As we discussed earlier, it’s important to identify what the person asking the question really wants to know. Here, we also want to know why. We may take it for granted that a colleague asks us a question because they’re genuinely curious, but there can be other reasons.

I’ve found myself in situations where I’ve been asked questions to test if I know the correct answer, not because the person needed or wanted to know the answer. It feels like the goal here is to call you out, either publicly or privately, on know knowing what you’re talking about. Nonetheless, the positive flip-side of this is that they may indeed want to test your knowledge so that they know how deeply they can dig into other questions.

Did they really ask a question that you genuinely don’t understand or were they just showing off their knowledge?

Is the Asker Confused?

Don’t assume that the audience member knows what they’re talking about, they may just be confused. Maybe it’s not your fault that you don’t understand the question.

What to do

Ask for Clarification

Don’t get embarrassed here — it’s likely that many other members of the audience don’t understand the question either. Ask for elaboration/clarification if it’s unclear what was being asked.

The Get-out Clause

If it’s really a nightmare question, politely ask the audience member to discuss the topic personally afterwards - they will probably be flattered!

Telling them “let’s talk about this later in my office” is going to be your last-resort emergency exit strategy. It politely let’s everyone know you are done with this difficult situation and want to move on. Don’t be afraid to use it, but remember — it’s not going to be your first line of defense!

Just stay cool and recognize that if you’re really in too deep, you can (almost) always get yourself out. The exception is during your defense, unfortunately.