After presentations I send comments and a grade to the presenters. Normally grades and comments are kept private, but there was one aspect of one of the presentations that I want to share with everyone.  Keenan Knaur was very clear about what he knew and what he didn't know. It's much better to say that you don't know something than to try to bluff your way through it.

There are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, it's the intellectually honest thing to do -- and the foundation of all academic work is intellectual honesty. If you are not intellectually honest, you are doing bad work. (That's true for the most part in the business world as well. Someone who gets a reputation as a bluffer will not be trusted to do good work.)

Secondly, by attempting to bluff your way through something you are doing a significant disservice to your audience.  You are telling them that you have given them the answer to a question when you haven't.  When you do that you are telling them that it's their fault that they didn't understand the answer that you gave. Since you didn't really give an answer, you are insulting your audience by suggesting that they should have understood your non-answer. Furthermore, a non-answer may lead some people to think they understand something that they don't understand, which again is a disservice.

Thirdly, by bluffing an answer to a question you may be covering up an issue that should be investigated. it may be that the question is getting at something for which there is no good answer. Such questions are very valuable and often lead to important insights.  By bluffing an answer you make it much more difficult to see when such a question has been asked.

This is likely to come up in your presentations. I am pushing you to present technologies that you don't know in advance. It's understandable that there will be aspects of those technologies that you find confusing. That's just the way it is--and we will have to accept that.

So when you don't understand something, the best thing to do is to clarify exactly what it is that you don't understand (so that you and others can investigate it later) and acknowledge that you don't understand that aspect of your subject.

-- Russ Abbott