diff --git a/src/sql/workbench/services/objectExplorer/browser/serverTreeDataSource.ts b/src/sql/workbench/services/objectExplorer/browser/serverTreeDataSource.ts
index e7a4d27f1a..ebcbdb6876 100644
--- a/src/sql/workbench/services/objectExplorer/browser/serverTreeDataSource.ts
+++ b/src/sql/workbench/services/objectExplorer/browser/serverTreeDataSource.ts
@@ -29,8 +29,13 @@ export class ServerTreeDataSource implements IDataSource {
 	 * Returns the unique identifier of the given element.
 	 * No more than one element may use a given identifier.
 	 */
-	public getId(tree: ITree, element: any): string {
-		return element.id;
+	public getId(tree: ITree, element?: any): string {
+		// Note there really shouldn't be any undefined elements in the tree, but the original implementation
+		// didn't do that correctly and since this is going to replaced by the async tree at some point just
+		// making it so we handle the undefined case here.
+		// This should be safe to do since the undefined element is only used when we want to clear the tree
+		// so it'll be the only "element" in the tree and thus there shouldn't be any duplicate ids
+		return element?.id || '';
 	}
 
 	/**