At some point in your career, probably during an induction, training session or particularly optimistic team meeting, somebody will tell you: “There are no stupid questions.”
The intention behind this is almost always good. It’s intended to encourage curiosity and make people comfortable with admitting that they don’t understand something. It’s supposed to ensure a workplace in which someone isn’t sitting quietly with their head down while completely failing to understand that one acronym that keeps getting thrown around the office. That in itself is an admirable objective.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that there definitely are stupid questions. I’ve heard loads of them.
The biggest culprit for stupid questions is not someone genuinely asking about something they don’t know. Stupid questions are most often the ones that people already know the answer to, have easy access to the answer themselves or, and this is the worst one, have no particular interest in the answer.
The question that was answered 30 seconds ago
This is perhaps the purest form of question stupidity. Someone spends five minutes explaining that the new website will launch on Tuesday. There is a brief silence. Then somebody asks:
“When’s the new website launching?”
Tuesday, Gavin. It hasn’t changed. There wasn’t an emergency board meeting during the preceding twelve seconds. The website was planned to launch on Tuesday. We have just told you that we are on schedule and confirmed launch day. It’s still Thursday.
This isn’t a knowledge problem. It’s an ear-brain interface problem. A listening problem. But we’ve somehow developed a workplace culture where questioning is always presented as evidence of engagement. It isn’t. Sometimes just listening is evidence of engagement, and question-asking is the exact opposite.
The question that is actually an opinion
This is another doozy. The question that isn’t really a question at all.
“Do we think customers might prefer something a bit more premium?” – Translation: I prefer something a bit more premium.
This particular species of question stupidity flourishes in meetings because questions allow people to introduce opinions without actually taking responsibility for them.
“Should we perhaps consider…”, “Is there an argument for…”, “Could it be worth exploring…”
All perfectly reasonable phrases in themselves. But occasionally it would save everyone a shit load of time if somebody just said: “I don’t like it.” At least that way we’d be able to discuss the issues like grown-ups without having to speculate about some theoretical third party. Own your sodding opinions.
The question designed to demonstrate intelligence
This one usually arrives towards the end of a presentation. The presentation is finished. Everyone understands. The meeting could end seven minutes early. We’re entering dangerous territory here, people…
Someone leans forward… “Just playing devil’s advocate…”
And everyone’s internal monologue simultaneously chimes in: “Oh for fuck’s sake, George.” Nobody has ever played devil’s advocate and then said something the devil couldn’t have managed without representation. What follows is often an overly convoluted hypothetical scenario involving several near-impossible events and a customer who apparently behaves like a particularly vindictive demigod.
“What happens if someone creates an account, but then changes their email address, but they’re travelling abroad, and their company has just moved office, so the billing address has changed?”
I don’t know, Martin. If that incredibly unlikely one-off event does happen, we’ll tackle it then, shall we? Or should we cover all eventualities and prepare for a situation in which a delivery fails due to alien invasion? There is a useful distinction between identifying genuine risks and inventing increasingly elaborate situations to demonstrate that you’ve been paying attention.
But people should still ask questions
This is where the cliché becomes frustrating, because the intention behind it is absolutely correct. People should always feel comfortable asking basic questions. If somebody doesn’t understand something, they should ask. If instructions aren’t clear, they should ask. If everyone in the room appears to understand something and you don’t, there is a decent chance at least three other people don’t understand it either.
The danger of saying “there are no stupid questions” is that it treats the act of questioning as inherently valuable. It isn’t. Curiosity is valuable. So is preparation. So is listening. So is thinking for thirty seconds before speaking.
The best questions usually do one of three things:
They reveal something important, clarify something unclear, or challenge an assumption that deserves challenging.
They move the conversation forward. Sometimes the smartest contribution you can make to a meeting isn’t a question at all. It’s noticing that everything has been covered, everyone understands what happens next, and nobody needs to hear from you. You can just let the meeting finish. It’s surprisingly difficult, but with practice, entire organisations could save literally minutes every week.