# Uh Can You Clarify That By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-07-30 It can be intimidating to respond to a question when one has no clear answer or is utterly clueless as to the context of the question. The pressure is dialed up even further when the question is asked during an evaluation or interview. Here, one feels the pressure to respond in an informed and thoughtful way. There are two ways of responding to these questions. The first is to start talking and hoping to stick the landing through the rambling. Sticking the landing is the most critical component, as few will remember the beginning, but a good ending will dominate a questioner's memory (e.g., recency bias). However, this approach can be risky because one may not deliver anything coherent. As a result, one should only utilize this strategy if one understands the question's context and knows there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer. This allows for a larger range of possibilities and allows one to explore an area of which one is at least contextually aware. This brings about the second approach: ask a broad, clarifying question. When the question's context is elusive, or there is a right and wrong answer that one does not know, attempting to ramble through an answer isn't likely to work. But, asking too many clarifying questions also indicates that one does not know anything about the question or the answer. So, keep the clarifying question broad with a hint of confusion that places doubt in the questioner's mind as to whether they were clear in their question. For example, one can ask, "Can you clarify what you mean by ... ?" A reasonable questioner will explain in sufficient detail to hopefully hint at what they are looking for. If one is still clueless, it's best to say some version of "I'm not sure." A last bit of guidance is to say as little as possible when it is clear one has entered into a realm of an unknown subculture. For example, I was once asked in an interview whether I was this person or that person regarding some obscure technology meme. I had no clue what they were talking about, but from the question, they thought I was part of their subculture crowd. So, I asked the clarifying question: "What's the second thing you said?" Admittedly, this could have been a better broad question. But their response was, "That's the perfect answer, at least for some of us." I mentally declared victory and smiled like I was in on the joke. I had no clue, but there was no need to let them know. Sometimes, one gets lucky. Other times, one has practiced enough to stick the landing, and still, other times, one crashes and burns. Even a bad performance can be entertaining. Focus on the performance and not the outcome. #### Related Items [[Questions]] [[Answers]] [[Strategy]] [[Interviewing]] [[Performance]] [[Talking]] [[Thinking]]