The Power of Questions

A simple technique that can transform difficult problems

Image by from

We’re taught in school that only correct answers count. So you better get them right.

In real life though, we confront problems all the time that don’t have just a single right answer, and sometimes have no obvious answer at all. Maybe the challenge is how to get your kids to eat vegetables. Or how to change the culture in your organization. It could be much bigger, such as countering climate change.

In cases like these, our usual bag of problem-solving tricks doesn’t work so well. Do we have greater consensus on how to act if climate change models become more precise? Can we control our child more? Does a memo to employees mandating new norms produce the desired culture change? Very probably not.

Medicine is no exception. When you are queried as an intern on the hospital floor you better have the right answer. Doctors are highly trained to solve problems — patients’ illnesses—by examining evidence and narrowing possibilities into a diagnosis. That training serves them well for purposes of diagnosis.

Then COVID-19 strikes. Hospitals are ambushed. The doctors’ training helps them discover effective treatment for this mysterious disease. It’s not enough. The patients keep coming. The patients keep dying. The…