I Don't Understand

I first noticed this effect in college, when the prof would be talking about something that didn't make sense to me. If I remained silent, he'd never explain (of course) and I'd remain ignorant. However, whenever I asked him, everyone would start furiously writing down his explanation in their notes.<p>So I got into the habit of saying "I don't understand". Inevitably, there would be quite a number of other people who also didn't understand, but were afraid to ask, so I'd just ask first. That stuck with me throughout my career and served me well. If you don't understand, ask.<p>Also, contrary to common sentiment, there is no minimum competency level that grants you the privilege of saying "I don't understand." Ignorance is not a monopoly of the elite.

Making a clear statement such as "I don't understand" also is a great signal to your coworkers. It kills confusion and builds trust: I know that if you don't understand, you will let me know. That is much better than having someone who I have to poke to admit that they don't understand something.<p>Another personal favorite is stating unequivocally, loud and clear that "<i>This was my mistake</i>". It is tempting to just fix the mistake but even if you have fixed it, if there isn't clear <i>declared</i> ownership, you probably haven't addressed the root cause.<p>Doing this keeps you honest to yourself and also removes the awkward air where no one knows who is responsible for this mistake because no one has taken ownership. To pull this off you need an environment that won't punish mistakes by default.<p>There are absolutely fireable mistakes but if you do this right, the employee should volunteer to be let go because he realizes the gravity of his error.

I am but an egg. Very new as a developer, not particularly good.<p>The smartest programmer in my workspace frequently looks for me when he's trying to solve something hard. There are a dozen people around us, at least, who are better able to _solve_ whatever problem he's working on. But they don't ask as many questions. I ask a lot of questions. Midway through explaining stuff he's solved his problem.<p>And meanwhile I've learned a ton.

I can see why there seems to be a stigma attached to admitting you don't understand something, especially if you've just started at a new place and you want to make a good impression and reassure them they made the right choice hiring you. I've been guilty too many times of not speaking up when I don't understand something and it comes back to bite you. It makes you look more incompetent being ignorant and not speaking up and then ultimately failing to deliver, than it does to admit you don't understand something thus lowering expectations of the outcome from your work.<p>To be honest most senior developers are guilty of not creating the right kind of environments for people to comfortably admit they don't understand something and then it brings the whole team down as a result. With exception of where I work now, the senior developers at all other large companies I've worked at made you feel stupid for admitting you didn't understand. There's no weakness in admitting you don't understand, but because of the way companies these days throw words like Agile and lean around, it's no surprise people are afraid to speak up when a company works in the form of 3 week sprints.<p>While it comes down to the volatile environments managers and senior developers have created over the years, a bad economy doesn't exactly help when it comes to admitting you don't understand something you were hired to do either.

That the most experienced devs say this the most might not be just about status games. You need to have a very solid shared background to be able to jump to understanding something after the sort of short verbal explanation "I don't understand" can be replied with.<p>If I go to an university lecture on advanced math, I won't understand things, and can say so. But it's unlikely the lecturer can say anything in the span of five minutes that will make me understand, since what would actually get me close to understanding the content of that lecture are several semesters worth of studies leading up to it.<p>The senior devs might be the only people on the room who do have such a solid grasp of their stuff that they can fill in their understanding with just a few minutes of explanation. Junior people don't understand either, but they might need to work over the new thing for hours, not five minutes, to get a proper handle on it, and you can't give an hours-long answer to someone who says they don't understand.

I've always used the words "I don't know". My mother kept telling me she hated hearing those words. I can imagine that she was pissed that I didn't take a guess, but guess what? I hate guessing! I hate making decisions and jumping to conclusions based on partial knowledge.<p>Almost every environment I've been in - whether it be high-school or grad-school, a corporate setup, a startup,; I've found that "I don't know"/"I didn't get you" goes a long way. The other person in the picture usually goes out of their way to make me understand what I'm missing.

One expression of this that I hear from newer devs (and clients) sometimes is "Can't we just...?" and what it really means is "I don't understand", but in a more socially safe way. If I address the question as if it were "what am I missing that makes this seemingly simple solution not viable?" it usually addresses the question and spreads better understanding. I also find that if someone is having trouble understanding my design, it is only rarely a lack of understanding on their part, and more often a lack of good design and good communication of that design on my part. "I don't understand" is a cue to try to make your architecture, design, and code more understandable.

Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher from 2,500 years aging said this. "Wisest is he who knows he does not know".<p>And er, Donald Rumsfeld, when talking about unknown unknowns.

Totally agree. In fact, when I was working at my first programming job, I realised I'd reached a milestone in competency when I could confidently say "I don't understand" without fear of ridicule or feeling stupid or worrying about slowing down the rest of the team.

I've asked interviewees very difficult questions for this exact reason. I want them to say "I don't understand" or "I don't know" rather than bullshit me an answer. Of course, after saying "I don't know," I instruct them to elaborate on how they would work out the solution -- co-workers? Google? Experiment?

There's an Israeli saying that encapsulates this effect exactly (if somewhat abrasively): "Whoever asks, is stupid for a moment; whoever doesn't ask, stays stupid forever."

I find that people not only have different views of The World, but also different internal definitions and understandings of basic terminology. This guy has the understanding that some assumption is implied in the implementation of an algorithm. That guy has never assumed that was the case. Both have tremendous amounts of experience in writing software systems (for example.) I've seen this exact scenario cause dozens of minutes of superfluous conversation because neither of them bothered to hear a detail that would allow them to realize there was not a full understanding between them. To address this case, my personal habit has become to listen carefully, consider the very words being spoken, identify those little things that aren't clear, have bred assumptions, or just plain don't make sense, and then interrupt ... even if by the time my brain has done all this the speaker has moved on.<p>It's leagues better than working under the wrong assumptions for days, weeks, months...

It's so critical to foster a culture where "I don't understand" and (to risk going off on a tangent) "I don't think that's right" is acceptable, even if its an intern to a CEO.<p>Reminds me of The Checklist Manifesto which cites how OR nurses and doctors who communicated best--they know each others names and nurses can tell doctors "stop"--had fewer surgical errors.

I started saying "I don't understand" years ago. A few very intelligent people have looked at me like I'm an idiot when I've said it. Don't expect it to make you look good in front of everyone.

One thing that irks me is when you're given some sort of spec document and just told by someone senior the equivalent to RTFM; no questions tolerated ... you have to read and understand the document by yourself, and that's it. That's happened a couple of times to me... and its totally unproductive.

My analysis professor used to say, if you state that some part of the proof is trivial then it should be easy to just write it out. And when you have a hard time writing it out or it takes too long, perhaps it's not trivial after all.

Just last week I've practiced "I don't understand" again. Now I don't particularly like jeopardizing my position at work, but looks like that question wasn't met well. A manager running the meeting (plans for next year) frowned upon a person who seems to be not understanding what he was talking before. In retrospect, I might missed some explanations - didn't quite get them at the time he gave them, possibly didn't pay enough attention - but that was the reason for my question!<p>The matter was important to "get". Hard to say if the annoyance was justified... but the result is this question may also backfire, even if it shouldn't.

This should be promoted in any company. If you cant say it or its "not cool" to ask these kind of questions get a new job.<p>It works against the biggest problem we all have miscommunication.

I'm managing a project right now, and I've found that frequently if I don't understand something, then saying this is indeed helpful. It felt silly the first few times, as I'm supposed to know the hows and whys as the project manager. But it offers me an opportunity to learn, and a few times has found sections of code that weren't really understood by anybody (perhaps from prior developers or cut/pasted from god knows where).<p>Great advice.

Background and what social class you came from play a very big role in this too. While an upper class kid may feel perfectly entitled to say 'i don't understand' in any situation, this behavior is often implicitly if not more overtly discouraged for people from lower class backgrounds. When you say 'i don't understand', the unspoken subtext is 'i don't understand: this is important, and my understanding is definitely worth whatever time it takes for you to explain it to me personally, regardless of whether anyone else is having a problem or not'.<p>Equality among people academically and vocationally needs to be backed up by strong support and activism for greater social and economic equality. Otherwise trivial efforts to promote more participation are a farce, and nothing is ever going to change.

I used to say <i>I'm always right because when I'm not I say it (or I admit I'm not sure)</i>. It came out as being arrogant so I stopped using it publicly. But it's true. When I'm not perfectly sure, I never act like so. I'm only comfortable arguing back when I'm <i>totally</i> sure, i.e. can point to the right explanation in a book or something similar. Friends find it a bit annoying.. because whenever they ask a question, I'm rarely comfortable answering <i>yes</i> or <i>no</i>.. it's always, <i>well, it depends</i> ;)

Living in a country where you're learning the language is a good way to get used to saying 'I don't understand'. When I was really bad at the language I just often sat there and hoped someone would translate for me but as my confidence increased I was able to say 'Can you rephrase that for me' or 'I don't get the cultural reference'. Now I love asking questions, as so much extra knowledge comes with it and you can get people to go off on wonderful tangents.

I agree very strongly with the sentiment of the article, and would like to add that I think the flipped side of the "I don't understand" is just as important.<p>I.e., You're trying to explain something and someone doesn't understand, you should be patient with the person. I don't think it's always (or even greater than 50%) the case, but enough times after finding out what the lynchpin of understanding was there are ways I could have improved my first explanation.

With all the emphasis on confidence in modern culture, its dishonest to say you should in general admit you don't understand something.<p>In a negotiation for example, if you admit you dont understand something, the other party can use that factor to take advantage of you.<p>It also hurts your credibility in front of a wider audience when giving a speech for example.<p>While I do think being humble should be respected, modern culture will look down on those who admit they don't understand.

There are multiple levels in which I agree with the above sentiment. Some of my teachers had these quotations to encourage questions!<p>1) If you say you dont understand, you may appear to be a fool for a few minutes, if you pretend to understand (while you dont)... you are a fool for life.<p>2) To learn something knew, you have to set your ego(pretending to know lest you appear ignorant) aside and start humbly with basics.

I would often do this in class (or at work, in meetings) either because I really didn't understand, or because I could tell a bunch of others didn't. But it is fine to phrase it something not being clear, asking if they can try to explain a different way to make it more clear, or trying to rephrase whatever it is myself.

Creating a culture where asking questions and identifying when one doesn't understand something is what we strive for, but there still seems to be a stigmatism when one expresses their confusion.<p>How do we create an environment where one doesn't feel it's wrong to ask for clarification without being subject to "looking stupid"?

"I don't know" shouldn't be feared either.

As an instructor I have the opposite problem. How can I encourage students to say “I don’t understand”?

I really liked this article, but I think the very best devs are the ones who admit they don't understand and then ask specific, intelligent questions.<p>Anyway, admitting you don't fully understand something is the first step to fully understanding it. Great article!

I hope this isn't the case. I've been sure to speak up when I don't understand since the beginning. Don't people appreciate it when you want to make sure you get it right the first time?

Reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect</a>

Also, people who never say "I don't understand" will never get explanations of concepts they don't understand. The more you say this phrase, the faster you'll learn.

The same is true of scientists: the best among them say "I don't know" or "I don't understand" <i>all the time</i>.

Expressing vulnerability requires a great deal of maturity, and is well-rewarded.

I speak up and protest when I don't understand. I "fight" back and challenge the logic of code|process|etc when I disagree. I don't do these things out of disrespect or because I think I'm "that smart". I do it because I <i>need</i> to understand and I don't. So I pick at it until I have a complete understanding. (Sometimes this is "Because." and I can accept that)<p>This also has the nice side effect of bringing a different perspective to an existing problem. It's a habit that has left several managers going "wow, you sure know what's going on, or you found problems that we'd not considered". I just shrug and reply honestly, "I'm just trying to understand."<p>It's of course also invaluable advice for students of any ages.

Well said, plus this gives the person a chance to think through more of their idea and explain it in more detail. Lot of times developers simply "assume" that other people get it, while that may not be the case.