When was the last time you admitted you were wrong about something?

As someone who leads way too many meetings for work, I’m always on the look-out for good icebreaker questions.

This one popped into my head the other day:

When was the last time you were wrong about something?

Too hard, of course, for a casual icebreaker. And—potentially—with answers a little too revealing for the workplace…

But even as I dismissed the question’s icebreaker potential, I couldn’t help but consider the “next level” of the question:

When was the last time you admitted you were wrong about something?

It’s hard enough to stop and actually acknowledge our own wrongness about something—most of the time, I drive right past past any opportunity to dwell on my wrongness—but it strikes me as even harder to claim that wrongness and tell someone else about it.

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Because all people are fallible, there’s no doubt that we are all occasionally wrong about things.

But what things are we wrong about?

As I’ve grown older, I have found it easier (not to mention less anxiety inducing) to admit that I don’t know about something—that band I’ve never heard of, the score of last night’s Broncos game, how a swamp cooler works.

But admitting that I was wrong—as opposed to admitting that I don’t have a particular piece of specific (or, let’s be honest, general) knowledge—doesn’t seem to have gotten any easier.

In fact, if anything, I have gotten better at avoiding the evidence of my wrongness. It strikes me as a prime (and invisible) example of cognitive dissonance, wherein I have developed a view of myself as someone who is eminently reasonable and an astute reader of the people around me.

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But is that true?

If I’m honest, it seems far more likely that I’m no more than average in those abilities. My “eminent” reasonableness is no more eminent than most of the other people I know. If pressed, I would be forced to admit that people I know surprise me all the time.

They do things that do not align with my understanding of them and their expected behavior. There’s occasional delight and frustration in this lack of foresight for someone (me) who imagines himself as having better-than-average insight into others’ actions—but there’s also an automatic retrospective re-analysis that happens.

Armed with my new knowledge of this person, I snap a new lens on when I look at the past. Actions and behaviors make sudden, new sense, and I can continue with my largely self-made illusion of superior people evaluation.

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Or I can push back against that urge.

Losing the specifics of that example—I can start to stop that constant vindication of my own abilities and allow myself to feel wrong. Better still, I can make the occasional commitment to others of my own wrongness, and actually say those words aloud:

You know, I was wrong about that…