Ask the Right Questions

I took a transatlantic flight today, and expected to spend the majority of my time working on airline wifi. The wifi didn’t work, though, so I watched the latest season of True Detective. 

Jodie Foster plays a jaded police chief who uses a kind of Socratic method to dissect cases with her lieutenants, focusing on what questions they should be asking about their case. 

But Foster’s police chief has no time for the wrong questions. 

“No. Try again,” she interrupts, more than once, when the direction of a question begins to sour for her. 

It’s not that any of these questions are wrong, per se. They certainly illuminate some unknown. But they aren’t the core question of the case. The questions she pushes aside are worthy distractions. She shuts them down because she wants to get to the questions that will transform their understanding of the jumbled clues. 

It’s entertaining to watch, fascinating to reflect on. 

Have I been asking the right questions? Not just the easy questions. The core questions that unearth transformative answers.