Critical Thinking = Curious Thinking
Why Questions Matter More Than Answers
Critical thinking for businesses, corporations, or anyone.
Critical Thinking = Curious Thinking
“I ask, therefore I am.”
Questions are more important than answers. Critical thinking is less about finding answers and more about asking questions that open new ways of seeing. When we ask, we engage with information, filter it through our own understanding and perception, and make it ours.
Why Questions Matter
Questions reveal relationships, context, and hidden layers.
Critical thinking is about opening what’s in front of us through questions. We don’t always need to solve problems directly — if we ask the right questions, the solution will present itself, naturally. This is the key approach of empathy interviews.
At Stanford’s d.school (the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design), empathy is taught as the first step of design thinking. One of their main tools is the empathy interview — a method where you ask open-ended questions about people’s lives, behaviors, frustrations, and needs, instead of asking them directly what they want. As the d.school explains: “Empathy interviews help you uncover not just what people say they do, but what they actually do — and why.”
It allows interviewees to highlight their own issues or reveal where they get stuck, often leading directly to problem-solving insights. This is a human-centered approach, and that kind of curiosity often uncovers insights that data alone can’t show. It allows solutions to emerge naturally from the human experience.
Take Airbnb in its early days. Growth was flat, and no one knew why. Instead of guessing, the founders went to New York, met with hosts, and asked: What’s really happening here? What they found was almost embarrassingly simple — listing photos were dark, unclear, and uninviting. Guests didn’t trust what they saw. So the team picked up cameras, shot professional photos, and swapped them in. Within a week, bookings doubled. What seemed like a growth problem was actually a trust problem, uncovered by curiosity.
Another story comes from GE Healthcare. Their MRI and CT machines were technically flawless, but children found them terrifying — the loud noises, the sterile rooms, the intimidating machinery. Instead of treating it as a technical issue, designer Doug Dietz observed children in hospitals, asked parents and staff about their experiences, and even spoke with children’s museums about how kids engage with new environments.
Out of this came the Adventure Series: scan rooms transformed into pirate ships, jungles, and space adventures, with staff guiding children through a story. The results were remarkable — patient satisfaction rose to 90%, the need for sedation dropped dramatically, and children began to experience hospital visits not as trauma, but as play.
Both examples show what happens when we ask better questions. Curiosity opens doors that logic alone cannot.
Curiosity Over Criticism
“Critical” often sounds like judging or tearing apart.
Critical thinking should really be called curious thinking. It’s about the ability to notice and discover deeper layers that aren’t visible on the surface. Curious thinking is the discipline of noticing, exploring, and staying open.
Sherlock Holmes (fictional but iconic) embodied this. His genius wasn’t in having the answers, but in his relentless curiosity, sharp observation, and ability to follow the thread of a question until the truth revealed itself.
How to Cultivate Curious Thinking
Start simply. Get curious about the issue you’re dealing with. Ask questions like:
What led this here, to now?
What makes it weak, or what makes it different?
What makes it stand out?
What’s the environment or context around it? Look around — everything is interconnected.
What’s the history or the story behind it?
Collect stories. Observe connections. Patterns will reveal themselves.
No Agenda, Just Curiosity
The goal is not to come in with an agenda, to control the outcome, or to push toward a pre-decided answer.
The goal is to be curious. To listen. To let the issue reveal what it needs to show.
Resources & Tools
Leadership coach Michael Bungay Stanier, founder of Box of Crayons — a Toronto-based learning and development company — teaches creative and critical thinking. His book The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever offers simple but powerful insights:
The best leaders don’t give answers — they ask better questions.
Curiosity builds connection, while assumptions block it.
A good question opens. A bad question closes.
✨ That’s the art of critical thinking. Or, better yet, curious thinking.
At Core, we specialize in developing Human Technology — the inner capacities that allow people and organizations to thrive in the age of rapid technological advancement. True progress is only possible if we upgrade our human tech alongside our digital tech.
If you’d like a template for empathy interviews from the Stanford d.school, with their recommendations, just comment or send me an email, and you’ll receive a copy — corehumantech@gmail.com
