We have been trained from our earliest school days to produce the right answer. Math tests, spelling tests, grammar tests, science tests, foreign language tests – every test you have ever taken involved producing right answers. Far more often than not, those answers were black and white. You were either right or wrong. Maybe you got some extra points for effort, but wrong was still wrong.

Even history classes, where you wouldn’t expect black and white thinking to reign, I remember multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank tests that required no understanding, just a good memory.

And all those right answers determined your grade. What you learned en route to your answer, or if you learned anything along the way, was pretty much irrelevant. I remember one time when I “proved” that pi was 2, not 3.14159… I knew I was wrong, of course, but what I really wanted to know was why I was wrong. Where did my proof go wrong? I rushed to school early the next day to find my math teacher and get some help. This wasn’t an assignment and so the only reaction I got was one of amusement. He thought it was funny that I had spent my evening trying to derive pi. And he couldn’t find the flaw in my proof. That was the end of that as far as he was concerned. The message was simple. Come up with the right answer.

Well, I’ve got bad news for you. In real life, there are almost never right answers!

And all that training you’ve had to find the right answer is actually a problem for you today. Searching for the right answer slows you down and prevents the use of uncommon good sense and judgment.

Want some examples?

We make thousands of decisions every day, often agonizing for hours over the right answer, whether the right apology for a PR disaster or the right new cell phone. Truth be told, there are usually a host of options ranging from bad to good enough and on to exciting. Sometimes there are no good options. Sometimes there are several options so similar that you may as well flip a coin. But we don’t. We agonize in search of the right answer.

We write, and rewrite, emails and documents trying to make them perfect even though there is no way to know when one is perfect. There is no right answer.

We plan at length trying to create perfect plans even when we know there are too many unknowns and despite the fact that plans are never perfect. Nonetheless, we persevere in search of the right answer.

We juggle and debate our marketing messages ad nauseam in the hopes of finding the right answer. Never mind that getting something out there and testing it would be a far better option than perfecting it, whatever that means.

We argue about the right words used to describe our vision, mission, and values as if there, too, we will find the right answer. And forgetting that behavior matters far more than those words.

We treat many political arguments as if complex situations are easily reduced to black and white principles. We want simple answers that are clearly right, not grey areas that leave us uncomfortably perplexed.

As an adult, you are no longer being graded based on your right answers. On the contrary, your success depends on your ability to:

• Elucidate objectives, alternatives, and risks.
• Make prudent decisions without consuming more resources than the decision warrants.
• Live with ambiguity.
• Learn.

Progress beats perfection. There are no right answers. That’s why you get paid the big bucks.

This article first appeared on Forbes, May 28th, 2018.