There’s always that one question that you prepare yourself for in an interview. “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” This question is a universal one, used by interviewers to get the person to tell them something about themselves. Well, for years when I began interviewing for jobs, I pondered why they would ask such a simple question. What do they want me to say? What do they expect me to be weak at? Well, after much consideration and thought, I realized that acknowledging your weaknesses is not a sign of deprecation. In fact, it is a sign of self-awareness.

Self-awareness is something I’ve learned is a component of Emotional Intelligence, as stated by Daniel Goleman in Harvard Business Law school’s book “On Emotional Intelligence.” This book has taught me to think about the impulses I take in daily life, and how this can potentially affect my work ethic in future circumstances. The most important component I have focused on working on in the past couple weeks is self-awareness. The ability to recognize my impulses that may lead to failure, or the ability to recognize what I do best and when I do best at it. Self-awareness is one of the most key factors when it comes to the ability to be successful because it provides motivation to become better, and strengthens your integrity as well.

So, we come back to the question of why interviewers might ask this question of “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” Well, the first note we can take from this is that you can answer this question in two ways: you can either bullshit the weaknesses to focus solely on your strengths, or you can answer it honestly and show your ability to be self-aware of your actions. The way you answer this question, I’ve learned, is detrimentally important on how people perceive you. Acknowledging what you do poorly in does not cripple the components of your strengths. Instead, it shows that you are self-aware and you are HONEST with yourself. Not everyone has the ability to be honest with what they are good at and what they are not, and that is something that I have learned as I have entered more challenging times in my life.

According to Goleman, self-awareness comes with a lot of work and persistence to improve. For example, I have a self-impulse to use my credit card to order things on Amazon, even when I may not have the money to pay my credit off myself. They make it so easy—it’s just a one-touch click away from my doorstep. Although this is a simple example of an impulse, I have made myself be self-aware so that I don’t carry this impulse on to the future. Sometimes, even though we know we default in some aspect of our life, we neglect to take care of it or get any better. I think that this is not us only hurting ourselves. The only way to begin to alter ourselves into a more well-rounded human being is to pick apart our weaknesses and focus on getting better at them.

With regards to being more self-aware, I plead to my sub-conscious that I never attempt to cover up for my defaults. Although it is sometimes only human that we protect ourselves, there is always something more to learn in the process. My message to all interviewers out there is to not stop asking this question. There is always some fault in us as humans, and our ability to work on that is what shows us to be leaders. The ability to assess our weaknesses can only make us grow as workers, and as humans. So before taking that next interview, think to yourself, what are you going to say when that interviewer asks for your weaknesses? How will you prove yourself out to be? The ability is all yours, it’s how you handle the question that determines how they perceive you.