Did you know there’s Question Week coming up on March 13-19 this year? The week is designed to raise awareness of the power and value of questioning.
The official website offers a range of resources for your enquiring mind. Of course asking questions isn’t something we need to reserve to one week a year, just like you hopeless romantics don’t have to wait for Valentine’s Day to show your love. However, in both cases to be reminded is not such a bad thing.
Fight to keep curious
The process of questioning opens up your curiosity. If your workplace has lost its enquiring nature then it’s time to hire a CCO. You know, a Chief Curiosity Officer. I came across the concept in the book Business Think by authors Marcum, Smith and Khalsa. A failure in your business to employ or encourage questioning is really a failure to remain curious. When you fail to remain curious you limit your opportunities and contain the possibilities. Worse still it can be highly risky and promote the status quo, especially in group situations where group think can play out. Reaching consensus is not the aim of leadership. Leaders have to make firm decisions and set a direction even if it's not popular. That's why political leaders let us down when they fall prey to populist sentiment.
This year it’s the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. It’s not an anniversary to celebrate but a time to remember the importance of speaking up even when your professional opinion isn’t popular. Engineer Allan McDonald spoke up, and if NASA and his then employer, Morton Thiokol, had listened and acted, the tragedy could have been averted. The night before the Space Shuttle launch McDonald refused to sign the launch recommendation based on his safety concerns that the rubber O-rings were prone to fail. The O-rings, were designed to separate the sections of the rocket booster however in below-freezing temperatures, they were prone to fail. Unfortunately on 28 January 1986, they did fail and the result was the lost lives of all seven astronauts aboard.
In relation to that event and on choosing to speak up, McDonald said: "I made the smartest decision I made in my lifetime - I'd say second smartest if my wife was here”. With that comment McDonald shows us that a questioning mind and a Valentine sentiment go pretty well together.
Ask the BIG questions
If you consider all questions are like an appendix, then you know that no question is useless. Don’t believe me? Although there was a time when the humble appendix was considered irrelevant, the clever folk at Duke University Medical Centre discovered the appendix serves a critical function. In the biology texts the appendix is known as a vestigial organ which means it was considered a useless organ in this day and age, however may have served a function in an earlier evolutionary time. Now it turns out the appendix is a safe place for good, digestion aiding bacteria to live until they are needed to repopulate the gut.
If scientists can show that the appendix isn’t vestigial at all, then isn’t it time to look at the other organs that fall in the evolutionary but useless bucket? I suspect we’ll keep discovering these vestiges are not so at all. It’s important to recognised just because we don’t know what we don’t know today doesn’t mean we won’t know more tomorrow. The only way to unearth deeper levels of understanding is to keep asking better questions.
Use questions to keep your mind open
The process of asking questions gives you reason to stop, reflect and reassess your assumptions. They take you off automatic. It’s like the difference between driving a manual versus automatic car. With a manual you have to keep engaged, and good questions work the same way to keep your brain engaged and keep you present. When you allow your brain to go into automatic mode you’re more likely engaging a ‘know it all’ way of looking at things. The trouble with a ‘know it all’ attitude is that it only highlights that you don’t. Also, a know it all attitude tends to go with a closed mind. Closed to counter opinions, contrary thoughts and other possibilities. Agreeing isn’t the point. Keeping an open mind and encouraging independent thought is.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
"Question everything."
"Never lose a holy curiosity."
- Albert Einstein
These quotes by one very famous scientist Albert Einstein suggest he valued the power of questioning.
Or did he?
Fact is that no matter how genius Einstein was, he didn’t keep an open mind when it didn’t suit him. He opposed the principle of non locality (basically that everything doesn’t have a place or that distant objects can have direct influence on each other ) as it contradicted his established view about the speed of light being the maximum speed for anything in the universe. He firmly declared the whole of quantum theory must be wrong, and never accepted the idea of non locality up till his dying day. If you want to delve into this further check out this article in Scientific American magazine.
It’s the purpose of science to remain curious. I suspect science has lost its gloss as a career choice for teenagers because they haven’t been sold on its wonder. It's the job of scientists to investigate and connect concepts rather than dismiss what they don’t understand or what doesn’t serve their purpose.
Be suspicious of any doctrine that doesn’t allow for questioning. The question to them is: Why? Nothing is absolute. We don’t know everything. You only have to look at the diet myths that come out almost daily. One day you're told low fat diets work, Pritikin is the go, carbs are bad, sugar is bad, etc… It never stops and it mostly always contradicts itself. Never accept anything without questioning whether it is right for you first.
Questions aid understanding, not answers
If you have an answer you don’t understand, that doesn’t make the question invalid. Science uses empirical and conceptual methods to aid our understanding of life. However, just because science can’t explain something doesn’t make it invalid or less real to many people. Take indigenous cultures for example. Their spirituality is based on folklore or dreaming that can’t be ‘explained away’ scientifically and yet the significance of their belief system is very real to them. Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you can’t learn about it and grow from your learning. There is meaning in everything if you're willing to ask bigger and better questions and challenge yourself first and foremost.
Empowering versus disempowering questions
Even if you are adept at asking questions, check that you're asking empowering rather than disempowering questions. That means taking whatever problem or challenge you have and turning it into a question. For example, how I can find out what the client really thinks of our offer in the meeting next week? This might be a question to ask when the client told you they like your offer but time and again they’re not buying. You might already recognise that there’s a block there and have to ask different kinds of questions to unearth the answer. Be aware that not everyone is direct with their answers. Others might appear direct, however they could be using directness to shut down further questions.
If you’re faced with resistance to your questions it might be that someone is trying to disempower you. That’s why it’s best you avoid disempowering questions because they can destabilise your confidence and give room for self doubt. The ability to keep questioning keeps relationships and discussions open. They help to break down the conversation and delve deeper. Of course, if the other party, professional or personal, isn’t willing to entertain your questions, well that’s another story.
Challenging questions can make some people squirm. This reflects their state of mind, not yours. You've likely uncovered something in them that they were attempting to keep under wraps. By discrediting your question they are instituting a form of censorship to keep you from their truth or contain yours. Inconvenient truths can be uncomfortable. The climate change topic is one area where this strategy is frequently played out.
"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers." -Voltaire
Questions hold all the power. They can change situations and can change you.
*this article first appeared on LinkedIn 17 February 2016
