What Do You Do When You Get Asked Questions You Don’t Know The Answer?
Do you look forward for other teams to come to you and ask technical questions?
Or
Do you panic, and secretly wish you could hide in the corner, so nobody would even notice you’re in the office?
Your reaction depends on your associations.
Do you associate not knowing the answer to the question with failure?
Or
Do you associate not knowing the answer to the question with an opportunity to learn and grow in your career?
If the latter, I bet you can’t wait for a challenge to occur, a question to get asked, someone asking for help! You most likely love it!
When we get asked questions that we know the answers to, we don’t really learn much. We can just prove the other person that we are knowledgeable.
On the other hand, when we get asked questions we don’t have answer for (yet), we get the opportunity to grow in our career, develop more skills, gain experience and knowledge. And the icing on the cake: we can still prove we are knowledgeable!
Next time someone asks you a question, and you don’t have the answer for, do the following:
- take a deep breath, so you don’t panic!
- ask for some time to review the question/problem and promise to get back to them
- this is key: do your research on the question. Think about other questions they might ask you, related to the problem and find out the answers for them.
- if any testing is required, run some test.
- get back to them with answers and some more. They will be blown away.
It is that simple! Try it!
Follow me next week, I’ll show you my thought process step by step, when I got asked “Why is dropping a column taking so long?”
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–Diana
Dear Diana,
This is brilliant article. I’m the type of DBA who get panic, and secretly wish I could hide in the corner, so nobody would even notice I’m in the office when people to come to me a technical questions. But I learned being panic before knowing what they’d ask is silly. So I learn to remain calm and compose and listen to what people need. Most of the time, the questions are common, I can handle it and provide a useful answer.
But still, the attitude is avoid the challenge. So to see that having someone ask me a question, I get the opportunity to learn something new, to grow in my career, develop new skills, gain experience and knowledge. This is so brilliant because, instead of avoiding it, it makes me want to look forward to these questions/challenges.
Thanks, Diana for your commitment and effort to help me and other DBA getting better.
Hanh,