Why we rarely ask the Why question （and why that is costing us dearly）

Remember that time when you saw something for the first time and you didn’t automatically accept it?

Now put a newcomer into a corporate meeting and watch their face. Not the polite nodding but the actual expression. The slight pause when the tenth slide appears. The confusion when the group spends twenty minutes rephrasing the same point. The silent question hanging in the air:

“Is this really how things work here”

Now give them a few weeks, and it’s gone. They learn the rhythm. The language. The unwritten rule: don’t question the process, just move it along. This is where efficiency takes over from thinking.

Now drop a child, an artist or an inventor into your next meeting. They always ask the why question.

Before the meeting they would ask;“Why are there so many people in this meeting?” On slide 3: they would notice;“Didn’t you already say that?”, on slide 7： “Why are there so many slides?” and after 45 minutes:“So, what have we solved in this meeting?”

Does this feel uncomfortable? Good! Because they’re saying what everyone else is thinking.

Most organisations don’t run on logic. They run on inherited behavior.

Nobody designed a process that requires three approvals for a minor decision. It just… accumulated. A risk here, a control there, a “just to be safe” layered on top of another “just to be safe.” Eventually, no one remembers the original problem. Only the system that grew around it.

The same applies everywhere.

Supplier reviews that produce reports but no actions.

Decks that expand while decisions shrink.

Meetings that exist mainly because they always have.

Individually, none of this looks irrational. But it is!

What’s interesting is how rarely anyone challenges it.

Not because people don’t see it - they do. But questioning it creates friction and it slows things down. It exposes uncertainty. And in a system optimized for speed and alignment, that can feel uncomfortable.

So, the safer option is to keep going. Forward, but not necessarily better.

And yet, the biggest improvements rarely come from working harder inside the system. They come from stepping outside it - even briefly - and asking a simple question:

What problem are we actually trying to solve here?

It sounds basic, but it’s surprisingly disruptive.

Because sometimes the honest answer is that the problem changed, but the process didn’t. Or worse, the problem disappeared entirely, and only the process remained.

The people who ask these questions aren’t always popular.

They interrupt flow, they challenge assumptions. they force clarity where ambiguity used to be enough.

But they also cut through noise faster than any optimization initiative or hired consultant ever will.

They’re the ones who realize that a decision can happen on slide 3. That a supplier can be changed. That a meeting can end early - or not exist at all.

In other words, they don’t just follow the system. They improve it.

This is the uncomfortable part:

Most inefficiencies aren’t hidden. They’re visible, repeated and normalized.

Which means the real issue isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of questions!

So, kids question it, artists rethink it and inventors rebuild it.

What do we do? We add one more slide and call it progress. And then we optimize it… instead of questioning if they should exist at all.

So, try this once:

“If we started from scratch today, would we still do it like this?”

If the answer is no, you’ve just found an opportunity!