Learn Your Way to Success: How to Customize Your Professional Learning Plan to Accelerate Your Career

CHAPTER 6ASKING QUESTIONS: BE A SMART DUMMY

Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking … asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.

—Edward de Bono

A senior executive at a consumer product goods company told me that whenever he puts together a problem-solving team, he always makes certain that the team includes a smart dummy. When I asked him to define “smart dummy,” he said that it is a very bright person who has no background or knowledge about the problem, someone who can ask naive questions.

The example the executive gave me was of a team he had appointed to find ways to reduce the shipping costs that ran the company tens of millions of dollars per year. Most of the members of the team were from ...