Is “It Depends” a good answer?

And, of course, the response is “it depends!”

“It depends” can be a really infuriating answer to your question, but it’s often the first answer you’ll get from a consultant. As a consultant I’ll argue, it’s a good response, although obviously not an answer. In a complex environment, such as IT, it probably has to be the right response, at least to start with. The answer will come later, if it doesn’t then you have a problem!

If its a simple question, then no it’s not a good answer, a straight answer would be better.

Otherwise it’s a good answer. Here are some reasons why:

• it opens up the conversation for an opportunity to clarify the question
• it opens up the conversation to ask follow up questions
• many questions do not have one right answer, they have many, they may even have none
• it stops answering with the wrong answer
• it’s an opportunity to do some research and to build a case for one answer or another

However don’t over use it, you can’t answer every question with “it depends” and once you’ve done the research or just thought about it, then you need to give a straight answer, even if it comes with some caveats..

Take some examples:

• Should I use Azure or AWS?

Do you really expect to be able to answer this question without investigating further? It’s a simple question, what makes it hard to answer is that there is no one answer, both answer could be correct!

Sure there are cases where the answer might be obvious, but even then there could be some hidden caveats for example:

• Should I backup my server?

“Yes of course you should you fool, have you never lost everything and had to start again!” is the obvious answer, but hang on what if it is a stateless server that you can reprovision quicker! Even simple questions need some thought.

I'm still looking for an example question that need no thought before answering!

So just remember, next time:

if you use “it depends”

- don’t over use it, mix it up with some other exploratory response

if you hear “it depends”

understand that the responder feels they need more information before they can provide a valid, or even correct, answer.