Quantitative Science Blog

June 26, 2026

The Opposite of “Fake It Till You Make It”

Written by Hannah Park

The Smartest People Ask Questions

One of the things that surprised me most about working in Quantitative Science at Root is how often the smartest people ask questions.

Early in my career, I assumed expertise looked like certainty. I imagined that the most capable people in the room were the ones who always had answers, spoke confidently, and rarely admitted when they were unsure. In many ways, that assumption aligns with one of the most common pieces of career advice: fake it till you make it.

To be fair, I understand why the phrase became popular. Early in my career, I found it empowering. It encouraged me to speak up when I doubted myself, pursue opportunities that felt beyond my qualifications, and push through the discomfort that naturally comes with growth. As a musician, I relied on some version of this mindset before performances. Standing on stage as a violinist, it is difficult to perform well if you spend the entire time anticipating mistakes.

There is certainly value in courage. There is value in not allowing self-doubt to become the deciding factor in every opportunity we pursue.

Over time, however, I began to notice something interesting. The people I respected most — the strongest actuaries, data scientists, analysts, managers, and leaders I worked with — rarely behaved the way the phrase seemed to imply.

Instead of projecting certainty, they asked thoughtful questions. They openly acknowledged gaps in their knowledge. They invited others to challenge their assumptions. They were willing to say, “I’m not sure,” even in highly visible settings.

At first, this felt counterintuitive. If expertise is supposed to look like certainty, why were some of the most knowledgeable people in the organization so comfortable exposing uncertainty?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that high-performing quantitative teams operate very differently from the world implied by fake it till you make it. Their success does not come from people pretending to know more than they do. It comes from creating an environment where ideas can be challenged, assumptions can be tested, and learning can happen in the open.

What My Violin Teacher Taught Me About Growth

One of the earliest lessons I learned about this came long before I became an actuary.

As a freshman in high school, my mother signed me up to audition for All-State Orchestra. There was just one problem: I wasn’t taking private lessons, I didn’t really know how to prepare for the audition, and I had very little understanding of what distinguished a good performance from a great one.

My mother was a music educator. She believed in me completely. She encouraged me, told me I was talented, and wanted me to challenge myself.

The encouragement was genuine, and it mattered.

But it wasn’t enough.

I didn’t make All-State that year.

The following year looked very different. I began taking regular private lessons. I worked with a teacher who could identify weaknesses I couldn’t see myself. I received specific feedback, developed a practice plan, and spent months improving skills that were previously invisible to me.

That year I made All-State Orchestra. I continued to make it throughout the rest of high school.

Looking back, what changed was not simply my confidence. What changed was that my weaknesses became visible. Once they were visible, someone could help me improve them. My teacher could challenge me, coach me, and accelerate my growth because we were working from reality rather than aspiration.

That lesson has repeated itself throughout my life.

I didn’t pass actuarial exams by believing I already understood the material. Like many actuaries, I failed some exams along the way. There was no amount of confidence that could substitute for mastery. Progress came from identifying what I didn’t know, studying deliberately, and continuing to improve.

Similarly, some of the most valuable professional growth I’ve experienced has come from managers who provided honest feedback. The managers who helped me most were not the ones who simply told me I was doing great. They were the ones who could clearly articulate where I was excelling, where I had gaps, and what I needed to do to reach the next level.

Their belief in me mattered.

But their honesty mattered too.

Learning Requires Visible Uncertainty

As quantitative professionals, we spend our careers applying rigor to models, analyses, experiments, and business decisions. We identify assumptions, test hypotheses, seek feedback, and revise conclusions when evidence suggests we should.

Why should personal growth work any differently?

One of the things I appreciate most about Quantitative Science is that many of our strongest contributors seem to intuitively understand this. We have no shortage of smart people. Yet some of the smartest people I know regularly contribute to our “No Stupid Questions” channels. They ask questions outside their domain. They seek clarification on unfamiliar concepts. They openly admit when they don’t have expertise in a particular area.

What’s remarkable is that these behaviors don’t diminish their credibility. If anything, they strengthen it.

The willingness to expose uncertainty creates opportunities for others to contribute. It surfaces assumptions that might otherwise remain hidden. It allows ideas to be refined before decisions are made. Most importantly, it accelerates learning for everyone involved.

I’ve noticed another interesting pattern as well. The best experts rarely treat confusion as a failure of the person asking the question. Instead, they often see it as an opportunity to improve their own communication. If someone doesn’t understand a concept, perhaps there is a better way to explain it. Perhaps there is context that hasn’t been shared. Perhaps there is an assumption that remains unstated.

That mindset creates a very different environment from one where everyone feels pressure to appear knowledgeable at all times.

In one environment, people protect their image.

In the other, people improve ideas.

The Hidden Cost of Pretending

The distinction matters because hidden uncertainty carries a cost.

I once worked with an analyst who was eager to establish credibility and demonstrate independence. Rather than asking questions when he became stuck, he worked through uncertainty on his own and presented the project as complete.

The issue wasn’t that mistakes were made. Every analyst, actuary, and data scientist makes mistakes. The issue was that the learning process had been cut off. Questions that could have been discussed remained hidden. Assumptions that could have been challenged remained unchallenged. Expertise that could have improved the work never had a chance to enter the conversation.

The greatest cost wasn’t the error itself.

The greatest cost was the missed opportunity to learn.

I’ve come to think that this is where fake it till you make it breaks down in collaborative environments. The phrase assumes that appearing knowledgeable helps people succeed. But in organizations that depend on learning, curiosity, and intellectual rigor, pretending often slows the very process that creates expertise in the first place.

The best ideas rarely emerge fully formed from a single individual. They emerge through discussion. They improve through challenge. They become stronger because people are willing to expose incomplete thinking and allow others to help refine it.

No One Gets There Alone

There is another reason I have become uncomfortable with fake it till you make it over the years.

The phrase subtly suggests that success is primarily an individual accomplishment. The story it tells is that we project confidence until we eventually become the person we were pretending to be.

That has not been my experience.

When I look back on the accomplishments I am most proud of, I do not see a story of individual achievement. I see a long list of people who helped me along the way.

I see a mother who encouraged me to audition for All-State Orchestra even when I doubted myself. I see a violin teacher who showed me exactly what I needed to improve. I see managers who provided honest feedback about my strengths and development areas. I see colleagues who challenged my assumptions, answered my questions, and shared their expertise. I see mentors who invested their time and energy into my growth.

None of those people helped me by pretending I already had the answers.

They helped me by helping me learn.

And in many cases, that help was only possible because I was willing to acknowledge what I didn’t know.

The same pattern is visible across high-performing teams. The most effective organizations are not collections of brilliant individuals independently figuring everything out on their own. They are groups of people who continuously exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, teach one another, and collectively arrive at better answers than any one person could have produced alone.

That kind of environment requires intellectual humility. It requires trust. Most importantly, it requires people to be honest about where they need help.

Curiosity Over Certainty

For years, I assumed the opposite of fake it till you make it was self-doubt.

Today, I think the opposite is curiosity.

It is having enough confidence to contribute what you know, enough humility to acknowledge what you don’t, and enough trust in the people around you to let your thinking improve through discussion.

The smartest people I know ask questions.

More importantly, they create environments where everyone else feels comfortable asking them too.

In the long run, that turns out to be far more powerful than pretending to have all the answers.