Silly questions made history. They proved smarter and sometimes more practical than smart questions.

Making History

Some examples?

  • Why do continents look like puzzle pieces? – Alfred Wegener
  • Why don’t I float in my tub like a ship? – Archimedes
  • Why did this f***g apple fall down towards my head, rather than sideways? – Isaac Newton

You probably know where these silly questions led us – if you don’t, follow the links or ask your favourite LLM. And have fun!

Doing a Better Job

But I don’t expect you (or myself) to find out what existed before the Big Bang thanks to some silly questions. My point is more like: ask silly questions in your job, in your hobbies, and more generally in your life.

I know: some people think that, if you ask silly questions, you must be silly. They’re wrong and you’ll have many chances to prove it. Asking silly questions is often better than making assumptions.

In my consulting job at Vettabase, I often ask customers:

  • How do you do this?
  • Why do you do this?
  • Is what you’re trying to achieve what you really need?

Often, the answer appears obvious. And sometimes it is. Other times, it’s not.

Sometimes the customers are using incorrect terminology, and if I understand the question correctly, there is no way in hell I can do anything useful for them. So I ask: how did you know that this issue occurred? I want to know what they’ve seen exactly, and how.

Sometimes they fail to do something just because they’re trying to do the wrong thing – they think it’s the how, but it’s the what, and they don’t know that. Why are you doing this?

Sometimes they want to achieve something, because they don’t know they can achieve something else. Like, for example, what they actually need. Once you achieve this, what will you do with the results?

Solutions that worked many times might not work this time. Why? Maybe for silly reasons that you can only find out by asking silly questions.

When you do what you were asked for without asking silly questions, there is always a risk that you’re not really doing what is needed. We need more questions and less assumptions.

IMAGE CREDIT: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana)