Relearn to ask why

Thu, Oct 1, 2009

Every little kid goes through the ‘why’ phase. The ‘why’ phase means that they’ll ask the simple question ‘Why?’, and then when the parent answers the question they’ll repeat this process, asking ‘Why?’ again. Until the parent simply gives up and stops answering or tells the kid to keep quiet. This is such bad parenting… and we’ve all had it.

Our parents are basically teaching us to not ask the question ‘Why?’. We have become almost afraid to ask this simple yet highly effective question. This simple one worded question holds so much more than meets the eye (or ear actually). You are basically saying: ‘I don’t understand it, could you please explain me how this was conceived or how it works?’.

I think that we have become afraid of the first part of that last question: admitting we don’t know. While it is such an admittance that resembles great people; admitting they don’t know something and asking how or why it works like it does.

When someone should have asked…

I heard this great story about a Chip system here in the Netherlands. A chip system is basically a chip on your bank card, which you can put money on. You can then pay in stores without entering a pin code. So it is a replacement of cold hard cash so to speak. You have to charge your card at a special, small, ATM machine; called a Chip Loader.

The funny thing is, the Chip Loader has an option to ‘block’ the chip. You can then no longer pay with it, but there is still money on the chip. You can however still transfer the money to your bank account. But think about this. You need the physical card in order to block it and in order to charge the card you need the pin code. So how does this feature offer any value?

The answer is: it doesn’t. And my best guess is that it is in there because no-one was bold enough to ask why such a feature was needed in the first place!

Because this wasn’t asked and this feature was implemented, another interesting thing happened. Usually when a bank card is blocked, they allow you to unblock it (physically) at the bank or you get a new card. However, there is no unblock function (either on ATM machines or on Chip Loaders!). Instead, if you withdraw cash from an ATM machine, the block is lifted… Talk about a bad solution to a bad problem.

So we ended up with a system which can block your chip, if you (accidentally) use this functionality at the Chip Loader. However, you cannot unlock it at the same Chip Loader. You have to know that by issuing a cash withdrawal from an ATM machine the block is lifted. But no-one will tell you that it is.

Someone should simply have asked… WHY!?

Relearn to ask why

While we are so hesitant to ask this question, I believe that it makes such a profound difference if you can ignore your fear of being thought of as dumb or stupid and just ask this question. Ask the question when you’re almost certain, when you’re not certain at all … heck, even ask this question when you are absolutely positively certain.

It is not a bad thing to admit that you don’t know something. The more you know, the more you know how little you know!