Most people think that as their career grows, so should their expertise, and as a result they should be wrong less of the time. What they don't realise is there's a huge cost to this kind of thinking. It shuts down learning and it quietly undermines trust, often at exactly the moment you can least afford either.

The failed presentation

I remember one moment that taught me this the hard way. I was leading a team of consultants working with a client on a workplace safety problem. We'd done the groundwork properly: weeks of data gathering, conversations with staff and management at every level, comparisons against best practice. The night before we presented to the executive team, we were up until the small hours polishing what we were convinced was a neat, well-argued solution.

Then, in front of the client, it fell apart. Questions came up we hadn't fully accounted for. Gaps in our thinking, invisible the night before, were suddenly obvious in the room. And instead of pausing to take that in, we defended. We argued harder. We tried to explain away the gaps instead of admitting they were there.

Looking back, it wasn't rigour driving us. It was ego and pride. We'd put so much into the “right” answer that we couldn't hear that it might be incomplete. We only really had one option to complete the engagement and that was to regroup. We were forced to swallow our pride and go back to the client to work on the gaps in our understanding.

I expected a difficult conversation, but was surprised to find the client was pleased. Not because we got it wrong initially, but because we had listened to their feedback and were more interested in solving the problem than proving that we were right.

Don't let what should be get in the way of what actually is

Most of us carry an unspoken rule: the more senior I get, the more I should already know. Expertise, in this telling, means having the answer and defending it with confidence.

That “should” gets in the way of what's actually in front of you. Decide in advance that being right is the job, and new information stops being useful – it becomes a threat. You stop listening for what might change your mind and start listening for ammunition to defend your original position. That's exactly what happened to us in that room: we were so busy protecting the answer we'd prepared that we couldn't hear the answer the client was actually giving us.

Real expertise isn't the absence of being wrong. It's how fast you update when the evidence says you should.

Nobody trusts the person who is always right

Here's what I didn't expect going into that project, and what I've seen repeated many times since: admitting we were wrong built more trust than being right ever had.

It's counterintuitive. We assume credibility comes from consistency, from never walking anything back. But think about who you actually trust at work. It's rarely the person who's never wrong. It's the one who tells you honestly when they have been. We instinctively distrust perfection, because we know nobody's actually infallible. Someone who insists on appearing that way anyway doesn't read as competent. They read as hiding something.

What this looks like in practice

If you want to put this to work rather than just nod along, here are three tips:

• Catch yourself defending, and stop – If you notice you're explaining away a gap rather than addressing it, that's the signal to pause, not push harder.
• Say it plainly and specifically – "We missed this, here's what we're doing about it" builds more trust than any amount of careful hedging.
• Do it fast – The longer you wait to admit a mistake, the more it costs you, and the more it looks like damage control rather than honesty.

From hidden cost to superpower

The cost of never being wrong is not immediately obvious – energy spent defending isn’t noticed in the moment and the damage it does to trust may not show up until later. But being able to say “I got that wrong” turns that cost into something else entirely – a superpower.

Those who use it consistently build trust by demonstrating authenticity, learn faster by being open to new facts, and move things forward by directing their energy on the actual problem to be solved. My client never mentioned our first presentation again. What they did remember was that we came back and listened.

Matthew Egan is the author of The Failure Advantage, which explores how leaders and teams turn setbacks into a source of trust, learning, and growth. Drawing on two decades in consulting and technology leadership, including at Microsoft, Matt writes about reframing our relationship with failure as a path to higher performance. Views expressed are his own.