Jerry Weinberg wrote about egoless programming decades ago. The idea was simple. The code isn’t you. It doesn’t express your worth. It isn’t evidence of your brilliance or your failure. It’s just something that needs to work, and you can let others help you make it better. Lately, I’ve been wondering what egoless testing might look like.
Because this week, I asked more “dumb questions” than I have in a long time. I stared at flows that should have been obvious. I felt confused about basics. I took nearly an hour just to understand what I was actually supposed to be testing. And I could feel that old internal narrative starting to whisper.
“You should be better than this.”
“You’ve been told you’re a good tester. Prove it.”
“Everyone else gets this already.”
It’s amazing how quickly you can go from feeling competent to feeling fraudulent in your own mind. I didn’t come to this industry as a developer. Testing was my way in. And from day one, it taught me something that has shaped everything since: you often begin with confusion, and you work faithfully toward clarity.
That is not a flaw in the work. It is the work.
The Work Is Hard Because It’s Hard
Testing in a new system, with a new data model, new flows, new expectations, and new rhythms… it can feel disorienting. Even when you’re good at this work. Even when you’ve shipped major features. Even when you’ve carried the responsibility of quality in high-pressure environments.
The difficulty is not a reflection of your intelligence. The difficulty is a reflection of the problem. And pretending otherwise never helps anyone.
Questions Aren’t a Sign of Weakness
When I’m tired or overwhelmed, asking questions feels like exposing a flaw. Like I’m announcing, “I don’t belong here.” But the truth is different. Questions are the work. Questions are how testers build mental models. Questions are how risk becomes visible. Questions are how teams get safer.
Egoless testing means letting the question be the question, without loading it with shame. Sometimes the “dumb” question is the one everyone else was silently avoiding.
Your Confusion Isn’t You
This is where Weinberg’s spirit still applies. Egoless programming says: the code isn’t you. Egoless testing says: the confusion isn’t you. If it takes you an hour to understand something, that hour wasn’t wasted. It was invested in clarity.
If you ask something basic, you didn’t embarrass yourself. You surfaced an assumption that needed to be named. Your value has never been the speed of your comprehension. Your value is the honesty and care with which you help the team see risk.
Testing Requires a Self You Must Protect
Being the person who says “I don’t understand this yet” can feel vulnerable. Being the person who asks the questions no one else is asking can feel lonely. Being the person responsible for the final call can feel heavy. Egoless testing means tending to the part of yourself that actually makes good testing possible. You cannot test well if you mistreat the person doing the testing.
When I feel lost, I try to remember something simple: My questions aren’t signs of incompetence. They are signs that I am doing the slow, faithful work of making sense of something that matters. Egoless testing is not about pretending you have no ego. It is about refusing to punish yourself for being human in a very human job. It is about accepting that confusion is not a sin. It is part of the craft.
—
Beau Brown
Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.
Testing Tester 