Can we rise to the ask?: Charles Assisi writes on the power of questions
The Value of Asking What We Do Not Yet Know
Indiadailyupdate.com – Experience can be a useful guide, but it can also create a quiet temptation: the urge to signal that we already understand. A nod at the start of another person’s sentence can seem harmless, even reassuring. Yet it may close off the very curiosity that helps people remain alert, informed and genuinely connected to the changing world around them.
That reflex can be especially visible in conversations between generations. One writer describes how his daughters find his habit of nodding ahead of a speaker’s point deeply irritating. To them, the gesture appears to say that he has already lived through the thought being expressed and knows its destination before the speaker gets there.
For a long time, he defended this tendency as a benefit of age. Years of work and accumulated knowledge, he believed, had given him sharper instincts. Often, he assumed, he could anticipate what someone was about to say.
A recent conversation with his elder daughter forced him to reconsider that certainty. They were discussing possible career paths in a discipline they had both studied. He follows developments in the field closely and had felt confident that his knowledge remained current. When she explained an area that interested her, he responded as though he understood the terrain and began offering answers.
The problem was that he was responding to questions he had not truly grasped.
When Knowledge Belongs to Another Era
The contrast between their educations made the gap clear. During his college years, parasitology appeared as part of a broader course. His daughter, by comparison, had completed entire papers devoted to the subject. What he carried in his memory was shaped by an older syllabus, while her learning reflected a field that had developed considerably since then.
Once he acknowledged that difference, the conversation changed. Rather than presenting himself as the authority, he and his daughter could examine her choices together. Their shared task became identifying the questions worth pursuing, instead of pretending that the answers were already available.
That shift matters beyond family discussions. It is easy to confuse seniority with complete understanding, particularly in professions where people are expected to project confidence. But authority does not remove the need to learn. In fast-moving areas such as business and technology, it may make that need even more urgent.
“Sorry, can you explain that?”
For much of his professional life as a reporter, that was effectively the position from which he worked. Journalists frequently enter rooms where specialists, executives or officials possess far more detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. Their role is not to arrive with every answer. It is to listen carefully, probe assumptions and frame questions that make complex matters intelligible.
That role gives permission to admit uncertainty. A reporter is not diminished by asking for clarification; the question is often the route to a better understanding for everyone else in the room. The difficulty comes when a person no longer feels entitled to ask because others see them as experienced, established or influential.
The Hidden Cost of Looking Informed
Professional status can turn curiosity into a perceived risk. Someone regarded as senior may wonder whether asking a basic question will make them appear out of touch. The choice can feel stark: either nod knowingly or expose a possible gap in knowledge.
But there is another option: humility.
Humility does not mean discarding experience or expertise. It means recognising the limits of both. A person may have spent decades working in a field and still need an explanation when a new concept, system or tool emerges. That is not a failure of competence. It is a realistic response to change.
Consider a discussion about self-healing networks, a term that may sound technical even to people familiar with telecommunications. Rather than quietly making a note to search for it later, the writer interrupted a recent conversation to ask how such networks functioned. The answer offered an immediate lesson in the way present-day telecom infrastructure is being designed.
Looking something up afterwards can be useful, but it is not always equivalent to learning directly from someone whose work involves the subject. An expert can provide context, explain why a concept matters, correct mistaken assumptions and reveal the practical questions that a quick definition may leave unanswered.
Such exchanges are increasingly important because expertise is not always organised by age or title. Younger colleagues may understand emerging tools most intuitively because they learned alongside them. They may experiment with technologies in ways their creators did not initially anticipate. Their perspective can be particularly valuable to people whose earlier success was built in a different professional environment.
Curiosity as a Practice
The challenge, then, is not simply to remain informed. No one can fully keep up with every new development. The deeper challenge is to preserve the habit of inquiry: to notice the moment when an unfamiliar phrase appears, resist the automatic nod and ask for an explanation.
That moment may last only seconds. In a meeting, a conference or an informal gathering, an unfamiliar term can surface and create a small decision. One response protects the appearance of expertise. The other opens the possibility of learning.
Choosing the question can benefit more than the person asking it. Others in the room may be confused too, but reluctant to reveal it. A clear question can make a conversation more useful, reduce jargon and improve the quality of decisions that follow.
Experience remains valuable when it is paired with openness. The people most capable of adapting are not necessarily those who claim to have seen everything before. They are often the ones willing to say that this particular development is new to them, and ready to learn why it matters.
There is no shame in discovering that the world has moved beyond an old syllabus, a familiar professional framework or a long-held assumption. The real loss would be allowing the need to seem knowledgeable to prevent the next question from being asked.
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