Federal Reserve officials thought they were done raising interest rates when they decided last month to hold them steady, but minutes of the meeting didn’t reveal a meaningful debate about when to start lowering rates.

While nearly all officials anticipated policy rates would eventually be lowered before the end of this year, the written account of the Dec. 12-13 meeting, released Wednesday, underscored heightened uncertainty over how to navigate the next interval of monetary policy after the most rapid increase in interest rates in four decades.