This is our new dishwasher. She’s a beauty, right? Our previous dishwasher was ten years old, loud, with broken rails barely preventing the upper rack from crashing down on to the dishes below and breaking everything inside. Every load of dishes was a game of Russian roulette, where we would take our chances and let Fate decide whether we would wind up with clean(ish) dishes or a mess of ceramic fragments and shards of glass. Knowing that Lady Luck could only be on our side for so long, we finally went to our local big box home improvement store to buy a new dishwasher and end this game of chance.

Once in the store, we were casually looking at the row of dishwashers when a salesperson came by to ask if we had any questions. We asked our questions and he was very helpful answering them, and we were able to decide on the model we wanted. We checked out, went home, and a few days later, we were called to schedule our installation. A few days after that, the truck arrived and our new dishwasher was installed. My wife and I were both out, so the nanny was there for the installation. When I met her later to pick up my son, she asked him to tell me what color the new dishwasher was. “Blanc“, he said, or so I thought. Our brilliant child, after all, knows colors en français. “Black, that’s right” the nanny repeated. Wait, what? “Blanc? Or black?”, I inquired. “Black,” she responded. “That’s what you ordered, they checked the paperwork.”

When I returned home, I found that we did, indeed, have a black dishwasher sitting underneath the countertop in our kitchen. The problem, though, was that every other appliance in our kitchen is white.

It turns out that we ended up with the wrong color dishwasher because of a number of bad assumptions.

• I assumed that because my wife and I had a conversation with the salesperson where we mentioned that all of our other appliances were white and so we wanted a white dishwasher, that he understood that we wanted the white model.
• The salesperson assumed that because we then asked questions about a higher end dishwasher that happened to be black but came in white that we wanted the black one.
• I assumed that when the salesperson went back to get the model number that he was getting the model number for the white dishwasher.
• I assumed the right color dishwasher was ordered, so it never occurred to me to tell the nanny “Hey, make sure it’s white.”
• The install team assumed that because the model number for the black dishwasher matched what was on the paperwork that they should install a black dishwasher in a kitchen full of white appliances.

Everyone involved assumed that everyone else (including me) did their job and that, for whatever reason, we wanted a black dishwasher in a kitchen full of white appliances. Like in most situations, this entire ordeal could have been avoided at any time by asking questions. The salesperson could have asked “You wanted the black one, right?”, and I could have corrected him. When he got the model number from the dishwasher, I could have asked “That model number is for the white one, right?” But no one asked any of those questions, and now we have a black dishwasher.

We assume that if the other person doesn’t ask any questions, that they have the same information that we do, and they used that information to make a decision. That’s fine when my wife goes to pick up dinner at our burrito place because without any other information, she’ll pick up a steak burrito, extra rice, black beans, mild salsa, sour cream, cheese, and lettuce. The consequences of a bad assumption on her part that I wanted my usual order when I actually wanted a chicken burrito is that I get a delicious steak burrito. But the consequences of relying on bad assumptions at work, such as that another team is responsible for some aspect of the project, is that a project fails. Assuming that my doctor has all the updated, relevant information about me and my family history, and that he used that information when prescribing a new medication could result in much more severe consequences.

If the question is how to avoid relying on bad assumptions, the answer is to speak up; to ask your own questions. “I want a chicken burrito this time.” “Your team is responsible for deploying the hardware, right?” “You know that high blood pressure runs in my family, right?”

Sometimes, we’re afraid to speak up or to ask questions because we’re afraid of asking the dreaded “dumb question”. Or we’re afraid of looking bad for asking a question about something we assume is obvious to everyone else and, therefore, should be obvious to us, even when it’s not. Other times, we assume that a service provider will ask questions if there is anything in doubt, and that if they don’t ask any other questions, we assume that everything is clear and understood.

When everyone assumes and no one asks questions, you wind up with a black dishwasher.

Don’t wind up with a black dishwasher.