Why you should stop asking ‘why’ at work

In business, ‘why’ questions often trigger defensiveness instead of insight. Here’s what you should do instead.

[Photo: Jacob Lund/Adobe Stock]

As a leadership consultant who helps organizations understand how to apply artistic thinking, one of the lessons I have learned is one of the basic differences between the artistic practice and the business practice—in the former, questioning is the way of life, in the latter answers are the way to go. Artists ask “why” constantly. Why does this exist? Why are things the way they are? Why are we doing it this way? That relentless questioning is how they push past convention—and it’s the engine of genuine........

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