How To Ask Questions Like A Kid

Photograph by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi

When you spend most of your time with children- as I’ve inexplicably chosen both personally and professionally to do- you begin to notice that ninety percent of their waking hours are spent asking questions. (The other ten percent of the time they’re ratting out their siblings.) In my experience, the questions kids ask can be loosely sorted into one of three categories:

1. Demands For Explanations.

These are the classic Who, What, When, Where, Why and How questions. As in ‘What’s this green stuff in my food?’ ‘Why do you and daddy get to go out at night and we don’t?’ ‘How do bees decide which flowers to drink from?’

2. Just Plain Demands.

These questions are typically prefaced with the words Can I… or Why can’t I… and are the bane of every parent’s existence. Ie: ‘Can I have ice cream before dinner?’ ‘Why can’t I have ice cream before dinner?’

3. Questions That Are Actually Explanations.

You’ll recognize these ‘questions’ by that ubiquitous childhood phrase ‘Did you know…?’ Did you know my friend Augusta’s great-grandfather can do one hundred pull ups? Did you know there’s a lizard that squirts blood out of its eyes? Did you know monster trucks can jump thirty feet into the air? (Just a heads up, you may want to fact-check some of these statements.)

Here’s the thing about kids and questions. They’ll just keep on asking them, undeterred by your repeated no’s, your obvious exasperation, and your fruitless attempts to redirect the conversation. It’s incredibly annoying and strategically quite clever. Because kids have instinctively figured out something we adults need an ice hockey Hall-of-Famer to remind us of:

Chances are, if you keep asking long enough, you’ll eventually hear something you like. The strategy is simple: wear down the goalie by the sheer volume of your attempts until you finally sneak one past.

The Risk of Asking Questions

For most of us, particularly for women, this insistence on asking questions goes away by the time we reach adulthood and enter the workforce. There are several possible explanations for our loss of dogged inquiry. (Sadly, having it all figured out isn’t one of them.)

Maybe it’s because, as women, we’re socialized to value connection above all else. Asking questions means risking exposure, judgement, or rejection, which can lead us to feel disconnected from the social groups whose acceptance we’ve been taught to value so deeply. It’s a very vulnerable proposition- and while we all love Brené Brown’s work in theory, in practice vulnerability feels hard and uncomfortable and requires more courage than we care to muster. Acquiring a fixed mindset can also be at the root of our unwillingness to ask questions (more about this in my last article Moving Beyond A Fixed Mindset in Medicine). And then there’s the omnipresent hamster wheel of productivity we find ourselves on, whose very purpose seems to be keeping us from finding the time and space to even contemplate the questions.

The problem is, when we stop asking questions, we not only impede our ability to learn, we also accept the status quo. And frankly, the status quo can generally be improved upon.

Is There Another Way?

I once heard an interview with Tony Fadell- the engineer and designer who spearheaded the development of the Ipod- in which he used the example of those irritating stickers they put on fruit to illustrate what happens when we stop questioning suboptimal design.

All too often, we are confronted with design flaws, whether at our workplaces or in societal structures at large. But instead of asking ‘Is there another way?’ ‘Do I really have to accept this situation as is or is there a better option?’ ‘What would have to happen for a different scenario to be true?’, we simply tolerate them to the point of barely noticing anymore.

Wedges

The truth is, we mostly find ourselves operating within systems that were not designed by us or for us and will only ever acknowledge our needs if we relentlessly insist they do so. It might be as a parent in the workplace, as a physician in a hospital, or, of course, as any marginalized group pretty much anywhere. Questions are the wedges with which we pry open doors that have remained closed to us. Prying open those doors takes courage. It requires us to ignore the inner voice that is so quick to quell our questions with whispers of: You don’t want to cause a stir. You don’t want to alienate yourself from the group. You don’t want to jeopardize your standing, or be seen as- God forbid- pushy.

I used to have a postcard taped to my computer- a standing reminder to counteract that voice. It read:

What does this courage look like in practice?

The Questions We Might Ask

A friend recently told me about a professional event aimed at helping early to mid-career physicians navigate a career path in academic medicine. The event was set to take place from 4:30 to 6 pm. Now, anyone with childcare responsibilities will quickly recognize this timing as anywhere from tricky to impossible. And yet, the early- to mid-career physicians most likely to benefit from such an event are probably the ones who also have said childcare responsibilities.

If- inspired by our kids- we shamelessly applied the above-mentioned categories, we might end up asking the following questions:

1.) How can we have a seat at the table if dinner is being served while we’re out picking up our kids?

2.) Can we hold this event at a different time of day?

3.) Did you know that x percent of potential attendees for this event have children under the age of six and that most daycares close by 5 pm?

My guess is that no one asked the above questions. We don’t want to cause a stir. We don’t want to alienate ourselves from the group. We don’t want to jeopardize our standing or be seen as- God forbid- pushy.

Rethinking

Taken individually, these unasked questions appear harmless enough. So you missed out on an optional professional event because you were picking up your kids. It happens. Cumulatively, however, our unasked questions translate into gaps in access, missed opportunities for advancement, less efficient workflows, and false dichotomies in regard to personal and professional choices.

As an aside, the degree to which we feel comfortable asking questions is an excellent barometer for the level of psychological safety we feel in the workplace. Conversely, if we find ourselves in positions of leadership, one of our measures of success should be how often we are being questioned- and how we respond.

Questions are the first step in rethinking and the shortest route to both learning and unlearning. Here’s what they’re not: They’re not a guarantee for the answers we want to hear. They’re not the road to people pleasing. They won’t change deeply ingrained structures overnight. But, over time, we just might wear down the goalie by the sheer volume of our attempts. Until we finally sneak one past.