What If You’re Wrong?

by Ken Miller, AASP/NJ President

Last month, I did a little venting about some of the responses I receive to the technical content I post on social media.

Unfortunately, the comments haven’t stopped. If anything, they’ve given me more to think about. To be clear, I don’t argue with people on social media because there isn’t much value in that. If someone challenges something I’ve posted, I’ll politely respond, clarify my point or sometimes try to explain it a different way. What happens after that is what I find interesting.

I’ve had technicians tell me that procedures we perform are unnecessary. I’ve been told manufacturers are excessive or unreasonable. I’ve been accused of performing unnecessary work that does nothing more than drive insurance premiums higher, and I’ve been told that insurers would never pay for some of the operations we perform, as though an insurer’s willingness to reimburse for a procedure somehow determines whether that procedure is necessary. Some have gone as far as accusing us of being dishonest, fraudulent or even thieves for performing procedures they don’t believe are necessary. That’s quite a leap, especially when the person making the accusation hasn’t bothered to determine whether the procedure is actually required.

The more I watch it happen, the more convinced I am that this isn’t really a collision repair problem. It’s an education problem. There is a term called “belief perseverance.” In simple terms, it describes our tendency to hold onto an existing belief even when we’re presented with information that challenges it. Confirmation bias can compound the problem because we naturally tend to give more credibility to information supporting what we already believe.

What I find most interesting is the progression. It generally goes from unfamiliar to unnecessary, unnecessary to excessive, excessive to uncommon and finally uncommon to un-reimbursable. At no point did we actually establish whether the procedure was required. Instead, we found different reasons to dismiss it without ever answering the most important question.

Here’s the part I really want people to understand: You don’t have to believe me. In fact, don’t! Just look it up.

Pull the manufacturer procedure. Read the position statement. Take the class. Research the system. Find someone with more knowledge on the subject and ask questions. Challenge the information if you want to, but challenge it by becoming more informed, not by becoming more defensive. Being wrong isn’t a weakness. Every one of us has been wrong, and every one of us will be wrong again. In an industry changing as rapidly as ours, I would be far more concerned about the person who hasn’t changed his opinion about anything in 20 years than the person willing to say, “I didn’t know that.”

Remember what I wrote last month: There is a big difference between 30 years of continuous learning and relying on what you learned 30 years ago. Maybe that’s where we need to change our thinking. When new information contradicts what we’ve always believed, our first instinct shouldn’t be to defend the old belief. It should be to investigate the new information and ask ourselves a very simple question: What if I’m wrong?

Those four words don’t diminish 30 years of experience. They make 30 years of experience more valuable because they leave room for year 31 to teach you something. The best technicians and repair professionals I know aren’t the ones who claim to know everything. They’re the ones who remain curious enough to recognize that today’s vehicle may require something yesterday’s vehicle didn’t.

Vehicles will continue to change, and manufacturer mandates and repair technology will continue to change with them. So here is the choice: Do we spend our energy defending what we’ve always done, or do we spend it making sure what we’re doing today is correct?

You don’t have to agree with me, but before you tell me I’m wrong, do us both a favor and look it up.

Want more? Check out the September 2026 issue of New Jersey Automotive!