(Despite that word “critical,” it’s not about criticizing anyone.)
If you Google “ask dumb questions” or “ask stupid questions,” you’ll get page after page of – bluntly – nastiness.
Which is probably one of the reasons why people don’t ask enough questions: fear of ridicule.
Critical thinking requires questioning.
Schools here in the U.S. fail miserably at teaching critical thinking skills. (I can’t speak for other countries; if you live elsewhere, by all means comment and let us know how your schools are doing.)
Even into college and university, unless you’re lucky enough to take the right classes with the right professors, you’re probably not being taught to ask questions about what you hear, read, or see. Grade school is particularly bad at this, since it tends to teach “this is the right answer for the test.”
A friend recently pointed me to a delightful professor who’s teaching a class called “Asking Dumb Questions.” It’s part of Duke University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship course sequence, and the professor – Aaron Dinin – says this in the online course listing:
“We’ve all heard ‘there are no dumb questions,’ but most of us still avoid asking the ones that might make us look foolish. In this course, we turn that fear into a strength. Through fast-paced, collaborative exercises, students learn how seemingly obvious, naive, or absurd questions can break assumptions, spark creativity, and uncover possibilities others miss. Along the way, we’ll explore questioning frameworks used by innovators, entrepreneurs, and problem-solvers across disciplines, applying them to both playful and high-stakes scenarios. By the end of the semester, students won’t jsut be more comfortable asking questions–they’ll know how to use them as powerful tools for thinking, learning, leading.”
It wasn’t until several days after watching a TikTok video where Professor Dinin explains one of the assignments that I realized: he’s teaching critical thinking.
(I have failed to find the link, but his social media handle is @aarondinin.)
Critical thinking is what saves us from conspiracy theories, cults, and unintentionally posting AI slop and mis- or dis-information. (Wikipedia definition of “AI slop” linked below.)
Critical thinking helps surface problems before they happen, or at least before they become unmanageable.
Critical thinking – to point back to an old corporate example – might have helped Blockbuster’s leadership question (see, there’s that Q word again!) whether Netflix was really onto something … and might even have prevented Blockbuster’s ultimate demise. Who knows? We can’t know. But when we look at the case study, it’s pretty clear that said leadership wasn’t asking the right questions about what Netflix was doing. And there are plenty of other examples, such as Kodak’s intentional burying of the original digital camera concept to “protect” its film business. If they’d asked more questions about where photography was heading, things might have been very different.
As a leader, if you’re not encouraging critical thinking for your team – and yourself! – you’re leaving the door open to, let’s just say, potentially unpleasant surprises.
As a society, and especially in the age of AI and the resulting slop, it behooves us all to learn to ask questions. What’s the source? Is the source reliable? And so on.
NOTES:
Teachers and friends of teachers, please don’t jump on me for my comment about schools. I know there are some excellent teachers out there who are teaching good critical thinking skills. If you are, or have encountered, one of them, YAY. They’re few and far between.
Aaron Dinin is on many social media platforms and does a ton of short video: @aarondinin
Wikipedia definition of AI slop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop