I recently made a post on LinkedIn that got a lot of attention and interactions so I wanted to take a moment to share it here and expound on it with a blog post.
I’ve been in IT/Software Development troubleshooting problems for 20 years now and it never ceases to amaze me what question unlocks the answer to solving the problem at hand.
LinkedIn post on asking the dumb question – 2/10/2021
I was on a troubleshooting call with my team and the other teams involved with troubleshooting an issue that has been plaguing one of our servers for months now. About halfway through the conversation I thought about asking a dumb question because I knew it really wouldn’t solve our problem.
We were getting towards the end of the conversation and the only option we really had at that point was a Hail Mary type solution that no one was particularly fond of but was the only option we could see with the information we had.
So I asked my dumb question…
Which led to a question from one of the server experts on the call…
Which led to an explanation that triggered a light bulb moment for the expert.
Now we have a good path forward and our teams will hopefully be able to solve this longstanding issue today.
As we hung up the phone last night I realized that in most of the troubleshooting situations I’ve found myself in over the years, it’s the seemingly dumb question that unlocks the resolution…
The post above got a lot of interaction (for me) and resonated with a lot of people. To expound on the post though, how do you ask the dumb question well?
- Don’t be known for the dumb question. This one should be pretty self-explanatory but if you’re known for asking the dumb questions, that’s not a good thing.
- Admit that it’s a dumb question. I’m not a big fan of the term “thinking outside the box” because I subscribe more to the concept of throwing away the box in the first place. Not everyone is there though so you may need to make sure people understand that you’re asking the question to spur on discussion, not because you feel the question has merit.
- As a leader, use the dumb question sparingly. In the scenario I described above, we had come to the point where we had pretty much exhausted all options. What was needed was something that would get people out of their current mental groove so they could look at the problem in a different light and see things they hadn’t seen before. In most cases, the grooves are there for a reason so knocking people out of the groove too often is just plain annoying.
Two of the commenters on the post mentioned humility/vulnerability and while I wasn’t thinking in those terms when I asked the question, I think they’re on to something. If our teams see us willing to ask the dumb question and not always try to save face, how much better will they be because they’re willing to ask the dumb question because they’ve seen it modeled?