We encountered an issue where the users could not edit their profile as they are receiving the below error. We have configured multiple Managed Metadata Service Applications and each Web Application is connected with their Managed Metadata Service Application using a custom Application Proxy Group.

There was a problem retrieving data for this field. Updating values in this field is disabled temporarily. You can still update values in other fields.

Quick suggestions
There are a few suggestions on the internet and they work most of the time. You can first verify if the Managed Metadata service has been configured correctly and if the service is running. Also verify if the Managed Metadata Service is the default storage location for keywords.

Our fix
The web applications were all connected with a custom application proxy and each web application had only 1 Managed Metadata Service Application connected. The My Site should use these settings for the connection to the Managed Metadata Service application but we still saw this issue. We noticed that the Default Application Proxy which isn’t being used by a Web Application had two Managed Metadata Services connected. The Ask Me About field was working again after removing 1 Managed Metadata Service Application from the default proxy.