this^. it took a lot of intentional practice for me to shake the fear of looking dumb when in front of peers. however, i've since realized that pretty consistently the people who share this willingness to come off as uninformed are the best people to work with -- they openly admit gaps in their knowledge and are eager to close them.

conversely, when interviewing or evaluating people, if i observe someone pretend s/he knows something, that's often a really bad sign…