On the other hand, be careful with this approach. It can be very difficult to get candid feedback in environments with a certain expectation of etiquette.
One advantage you may be winning for yourself with your caveats, without even realizing it, is a degree of credibility. By being careful that what you say is correct, and not merely "Basically right, more or less. Kind of.", you may find it much easier to convince people when you _do_ take stronger positions.
I think Aaron's counterexample is pretty terrible. Recalling one time you slept in once in 2003 is really not pertinent to the spirit of the question. The point is clearly not to ask you whether you have ever failed to show up for work on time, but whether you have reason to believe that it may be particularly difficult for you now, perhaps because you live far away or have a history of repeated difficulties with time management.
Personally I would recommend erring on the side of accuracy. I've witnessed plenty of cargo cult programming. "This technology will perform well enough for us" could mean from one person "I have run benchmarks on representative hardware and know that, under conditions I am about to explain, this technology will work for us", and from another "I have read about someone else using this technology in some way for something. I don't remember where I read it. Probably a blog post that made it to hacker news."
One advantage you may be winning for yourself with your caveats, without even realizing it, is a degree of credibility. By being careful that what you say is correct, and not merely "Basically right, more or less. Kind of.", you may find it much easier to convince people when you _do_ take stronger positions.
I think Aaron's counterexample is pretty terrible. Recalling one time you slept in once in 2003 is really not pertinent to the spirit of the question. The point is clearly not to ask you whether you have ever failed to show up for work on time, but whether you have reason to believe that it may be particularly difficult for you now, perhaps because you live far away or have a history of repeated difficulties with time management.
Personally I would recommend erring on the side of accuracy. I've witnessed plenty of cargo cult programming. "This technology will perform well enough for us" could mean from one person "I have run benchmarks on representative hardware and know that, under conditions I am about to explain, this technology will work for us", and from another "I have read about someone else using this technology in some way for something. I don't remember where I read it. Probably a blog post that made it to hacker news."