A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

by Warren Berger

To question well—in particular, to ask fundamental Why questions—we don’t necessarily have to be on vacation, accompanied by a precocious three-year-old. But at least temporarily, it’s necessary to stop doing and stop knowing in order to start asking.

The “doing” part would seem to be more in our control to stop than the “knowing”—yet it might be even harder. In a world that expects us to move fast, to keep advancing (if only incrementally), to just “get it done,” who has time for asking why?

If asking Why requires stepping back from “doing,” it also demands a step back from “knowing.” Whether in life or in work, people become experts within their own domains—generally confident that they already know what they need to know to do well in their jobs and lives. Having this sense of knowing can make us less curious and less open to new ideas and possibilities. To make matters worse, we don’t “know” as much we might think we

Robert Burton, a neurologist and5 the author of the book On Being Certain, contends that we all suffer from a common human condition of thinking we know more than we do. For years, Burton has been grappling with the question What does it mean to be convinced? He told me he has concluded, based on extensive research, that the feeling of “knowing” is just that—a feeling, or a sensation. However, the feeling is so strong that it creates what Burton calls a “certainty epidemic”—wherein

Zen master named Shunryu Suzuki. Author of the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki immigrated to the area and taught there until his death in 1971. In his book, Suzuki writes, “The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert.” Such a mind, he added, is “open to all possibilities” and “can see things as they are.”

the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Robert Burton, the aforementioned neurologist who writes about the “certainty epidemic,” the widespread tendency of people to question less than they should, says that even when people do ask questions, they’re often relying on those same unreliable gut instincts and biases. “Everything that’s ever happened to you or occurred to you in your life informs every decision you make—and also influences what questions you decide to ask. So it can be useful to step back and inquire, Why did I come up with that question?” Burton adds, “Every time you come up with a question, you should be wondering, What are the underlying assumptions of that question? Is there a different question I should be asking?”