The Courage of Our Questions
~5 min read
Have you ever been told, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question”? Have you ever not fully believed the person who assured you of this?
As adults, we seem to have a thing against asking questions. We fear we will 'out' ourselves as ignorant or childish if we ask a question that we ‘ought’ to know. But let’s lean into that ‘ought’. What’s a list of things we ought to know? Who keeps this list? Who updates it?
Obviously, these are rhetorical questions. It’s simply social fear that often stops us from exploring the world with our deeply human curiosity. In a culture that values appearances, we want to appear like we already have the answers. But at what cost?
Einstein was (probably) a fan of questions
Albert Einstein once said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." He was likely a fan of asking questions.
We’ve all heard of our intelligence quotient (IQ), and there’s recently been more discussion about our emotional quotient (EQ). But did you know there’s such a thing as your curiosity quotient (CQ)?
Harvard Business Review reports that curiosity is as important as intelligence. According to the review, your CQ is all about having a hungry mind. Your CQ can be deliberately developed by asking questions with the express intent to gain nuanced understanding. HBR reports that people with a higher CQ experience better relationships, greater connection, and generate simpler and more original solutions to problems.
Oddly enough, children can teach us a lot about how to develop and strengthen our CQ.
Harness the power of “Why”
If you have children or have spent time around kids, you’ll likely be familiar with being asked “why?” That first ‘why’ is usually followed with another, and another, and several more after that.
Children spend on average around 70-80% of their dialogue asking questions to understand the context of their experiences and the world around them. Unfortunately, children eventually learn it’s more valuable for them to give answers rather than ask questions, such as answering questions in class, in exams, in interviews, or to contribute facts or knowledge to a conversation.
For whatever reason, we eventually (and very unfortunately) lose this tendency.
In fact, adults spend on average only 15-25% of their dialogue asking questions to understand context. And sure, adults (generally) have a better understanding of the world around them than children do. But that tendency to ask questions tends to disappear rather than evolve. As Bill Nye said, ““Every question leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions.” This is the evolution of curiosity.
The loss of asking questions is partly because we assume greater value in having answers. But as I mentioned before, another part of this is the appearance of knowledge and understanding, when a question, or five, is most certainly warranted.
Light a candle in the dark (and lean in with curiosity)
We believe curiosity leads to the worthiest opportunities for growth and discovery. As such, we lean in with curiosity, which means we embrace questions. In doing so, we light a candle in the dark for others to shed their reluctance and to lean in with curiosity as well.
As Carl Sagan once said, “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers.”
Sure, we run the risk of asking a “silly” question and appearing childish. But have you ever been the one to ask that question in, say, a meeting? And five other people pipe up and say, “Yeah, I was wondering about that too.” They had been sitting quietly in ignorance, unwilling to look foolish by leaning in and asking the question.
We can be leaders in the face of this reluctance.
Having the courage to ask ‘why’ can inspire a change within those around you. It can ignite curiosity, strengthen relationships, deepen connections, generate nuance.
In short, always ask the question.
