MAX and COUNT DISTINCT

Well, I'm not sure about the "most efficient" way, since efficiency in general depends on which database system you're using, whether there are indexes, and so on.

Your query would be something like this:

select case when ( select count(distinct datecol)
                     from yourtable )
               > 1
            then ( select max(datecol)
                     from yourtable )
            else null
        end 

Notice that if there are not more than 1 distinct values in datecol, the query returns NULL. You didn't say what you wanted in that situation.