
The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions - colinprince
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3437468
======
gampleman
My wife was* one of those rare people who just went ahead and asked people
whatever was on her mind. This had a curious effect as I often internally
winced and thought "you did not just say that". Sometimes I had the impulse to
apologize for her or put in a joke to soften the blow. However, curiously,
generally people didn't seem to mind or sometimes registered very mild
embarrassment. In very rare cases they just avoided answering the question and
she wouldn't press them.

But the great thing about it was that one could have really interesting deep
conversations with near strangers, because one would skip over all the
smalltalk and immediately discuss something everyone cared deeply about. In
comparison I would have shyly still been discussing the weather whereas she
would be already talking theology.

* She does it less now. Perhaps my bad influence or having kids?

~~~
outime
That’s a great story and I’m like your wife in that aspect, but just
intentionally. Either way you’re lucky to have someone like that around, it
can teach you a lot.

I’ve experienced very deep, fulfilling connections with strangers (friend of a
friend level) and still haven’t found anyone being embarrassed by these
questions, but of course nobody else needs to be around as it can quickly be
embarrassing. It can also be softened with an honest “if you don’t want to
answer I can totally understand” and move on with something else but almost
always received a somewhat interesting response. In return, deep/very personal
questions are sent my way and I’ve answered them all with the best of my
knowledge.

I can see how many people are afraid of having real talk (specially
introverts, as I was) because it can show your weaknesses, suffering and your
potentially “wrong” ideas/thoughts. Truth is, everybody has their fair share
of bs going on and being over polite and wasting time in meaningless small
talk doesn’t IMHO benefit anybody, and you miss very interesting mindsets and
experiences that can make your life much better.

~~~
steverb
I honestly don't know what a "deep" question sounds like. Is there a list of
topics that fall into that category somewhere?

~~~
outime
There may be a generic list somewhere but I find them to come naturally from
curiosity. Things like:

\- Do you like what you do?

\- Do you regret this or that?

\- Did you study what you always wanted?

\- How believing in X helped you?

\- What’s the worst memory/event you went through?

\- Do you love your parents?

\- What’s the best/worst your kids gave to you (emotionally speaking)?

\- Do you think you need this or is it a distraction from the important stuff
(whatever that is for you)?

Those questions I just came up for nobody in particular (for a close friend
those would be pretty normal) and depending of your background, customs, etc
they might be deep or might not. They’re not inquisitive and I’m definitely
not judging or trying to convince about anything. They do make you think a bit
before answering and you learn a lot from those, even from the most
superficial people. You need to be very open and accept very harsh and
contrary visions from your own in order to benefit from it though, and that’s
a long process.

~~~
cryptonector

      - Are you happy?
    

is a good one.

------
sandoooo
The author misses the point. People are avoiding sensitive questions not
because it impacts opinion on average, but because of the rare outliers that
ruin it for everybody.

It takes just a single asshole reporting you to HR to ruin your life.

~~~
georgewsinger
Yep -- a classic "Expected Value is not the only thing that matters, but also
one's Risk of Ruin" situation.

The counter-argument is this: do we _still_ overestimate our true risk of ruin
when it comes to asking sensitive questions? Are we _actually_ going to get
_fired_ (or whatever horrendous thing) for not asking that question? I bet the
answer is that we still overrate our true probability of ruin when it comes to
these things.

~~~
arvinsim
> Are we actually going to get fired (or whatever horrendous thing) for not
> asking that question?

What's worse than being fired is to be stuck on a job where the
environment/culture has gone bad. Not everyone has the economic and social
mobility to change jobs on the fly.

~~~
hanniabu
Or where you're effectively in a dead end job because that incident with HR
causes you to get passed up for any promotions or lateral shifts.

------
zrkrlc
Hmm, in my head, I model conversation as a game of who can get the mine the
most "intimacy", if you will, while revealing the least about oneself. So
risque topics are, as the adjective suggests, high risk, but also high reward.
Correspondingly, small talk is a lot of low risk, low reward back-and-forth.
You don't have to be intimate with a stranger, but you need to stick your neck
out if you want to progress beyond pleasantries.

Here's a longer piece about the whole topic of conversations that I wrote a
while back: [https://zrkrlc.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/a-long-guide-to-
conv...](https://zrkrlc.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/a-long-guide-to-
conversations/)

~~~
asveikau
Some personal advice: stop viewing your interactions in this transactional way
and just be yourself. Stop giving a shit who reveals what and the perceived
balance or imbalance of the same. Be kind and be generous.

~~~
vanniv
If I were to "just be myself" at work, I would be fired very quickly --
because my self is outside the narrow little band of what is "approved of" in
my workplace.

Every conversation of a sensitive nature is an opportunity for disaster if not
treated with the utmost care not to be "found out"

~~~
loopz
Doesn't this depend on decency of the people?

~~~
kqr
No. Being an asshole -- regardless of reason -- is terrible for the team, no
matter how decent they are.

Making an effort to conform to social norms of politeness goes a long, long
way.

Don't get me wrong; feel free to upset people, but they should be upset about
the factual content of the message, not the delivery!

~~~
homonculus1
I don't know why you assume _being an asshole_ is the trait your GP doesn't
want to reveal. Any number of innocuous interests could hurt your reputation
in different circles: hunting, being gay, watching anime, practicing (a
different/any/no) religion.

"What did you do this weekend" is a loaded question if you're a cultural
outlier at your workplace. Even decent people often have personal biases that
lead to awkwardness and friction.

~~~
vanniv
Thanks for being the only person to assume that I am an outlier in some way
other than by being an asshole!

I don't know why everyone assumes that "different" has to be "asshole"

If anything, "asshole-ish" would be a part of "self" that is allowed to be
expressed at work, so long as it is in limited doses

~~~
ineedasername
Sure, readers don't have to interpret what you said as "being himself must
mean being an asshole," but when you say that being yourself would get you
fired, some flavor of "asshole" is probably high any anyone's list for the
type of attitude/personality that would cause such an extreme reaction. Can
you expand on what sort of being-your-self attributes are not professionally
disruptive, but would still get you fired?

I mean, I can think of plenty of hobbies/cultural differences/etc., that could
make things awkward between colleagues, but not much that would get you fired.
"Wow, Bob likes to go Skiing in a Furry costume while voting Republican and
being an Atheist. We can't have that, let's fire Bob." doesn't seem all that
likely of a reaction.

~~~
asdf21
He's Republican / Libertarian and his worldview is grounded in economic and
biological realities, which will absolutely get you run out of many (perhaps
most) SV tech companies... for example, James Damore.

~~~
ineedasername
Again, you describe things that might be awkward, and even then it's only
awkward if the people make them so. It's not at all fraught with "you're
fired" potential if everyone remains calm and professional about such
differences. Not only that, but you're think it ng entirely too narrow if
"being yourself" only means expressing political and cultural beliefs.

Otherwise, I work in an environment in an industry that is much further "to
the left" than SV Tech: academe. You may not believe it, but despite the
cliche ostracism of "OMG that's a ::hushed tones:: conservative", it is quite
easy to be one without self censoring. You simply refrain from injecting
situations with those views when they're not called for, and if they are or
you decide to do so during non-work times (breaks or side conversations) you
be respectful of the other opinion. In short, don't be an asshole.

I get along with plenty of people all along the political spectrum at work,
because we have an environment of respect and professionalism.

~~~
asdf21
>You simply refrain from injecting situations with those views when they're
not called for

In other words, you tend to avoid sensitive topics at certain times.

~~~
ineedasername
That isn't "not being yourself" unless you refrain from discussing those
topics even when it might be called for. In my roughly two decades of
experience working in academe, I have not suffered negative consequences for
speaking unpopular opinions when they are relevant, nor have I ever seen
someone suffer the same.

But, if in every meeting I attended I went on a rant about how 4-year colleges
inflate student debt for marginal gain and future earning potential (yes, the
issue is more complex than that) then I would be labelled some flavor of
asshole, unprofessional, etc.

However, consider the context of admissions standards and policy for the
institution. It would not be inappropriate to discuss aspects of that idea.
How some segment of our population may not be good fits for the institution or
4 year college in general, that they would be better served by some other path
of advanced education and job training, and how it is part of our job to set
students on a good path rather than chase tuition dollars that put the student
in debt for no likely tangible benefit. That would be appropriate to do, and
in fact I do this on a somewhat regular basis, backed up by rigorous data
analysis (my own area of work) from both my own institution and national data,
when we are setting enrollment goals and other related benchmarks.

It's also been perfectly fine for me to discuss other controversial/unpopular
opinions with colleagues outside of meetings during non-work related breaks or
side conversations so long as I do so respectfully. Roughly two decades of
steady career advancement would indicate that none of this has hurt me
professionally: I have literally never failed to be awarded a promotion I was
seeking, and quite contrary to negative consequences I have developed a
reputation of speaking honest, unvarnished opinion backed by solid evidence.

------
crimsonalucard
Be careful about stuff like this.

There's an evolutionary reason for why it's default human behavior to avoid
sensitive questions.

In general there's sort of a trend with psychology nowadays in how it
identifies and teaches us how to deal with our own biases. While I think it's
good to understand the origins of our biases it is not completely wise to
ignore them because they are their for a reason.

------
gorpomon
I'm feeling this hard at my place of work. We can't ask probing questions
about people's real behaviors and actions, so while projects are running far
behind we're not asking why. We're great at keeping a calm head and working
towards a solution for today's problem. We have zero capability to reflect on
how people's specific actions get us into these problems.

~~~
dmitrygr
The one thing that you miss the most after leaving Google is the postmortem
culture - the fact that anything that goes wrong will be picked apart for
lessons to learn, and said lessons WILL be learned. Trying to get a large org
to buy into that idea is just... impossible.

------
Consultant32452
Anyone interested in this topic might find a search for the phrase 'preference
falsification' interesting. For a great resource in book form, I highly
recommend "Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference
Falsification" by Timur Kuran. He was recently in The Portal podcast for an
even shorter intro.

------
austincheney
The greatest conversational challenges I encounter are not immediately due to
sensitivity but indirectly so due to customs, assumptions, and culture. I find
many people are deeply fearful of originality and criticality and group
defiance when it comes to their operating habits, perceptions, and executing
behaviors.

In short many people will take drastic steps to irrationally preserve their
operating habits as cognitive decisions even in defiance of direct evidence
and at risk of eminent failure. Conversations about this are supremely
challenging.

In my experience the reason why this is so challenging is not due to
sensitivity, though sensitivity is certainly present. Instead I find many
people are challenged by objectivity as a deeply instilled personality trait.
The degree of objectivity acceptance by person is variable and varies further
in group dynamics. This is a measurable quality of some behavior analysis
tests.

------
tony
I wonder what would be a more personal (and interesting) question than:

\- Describe your relationship with your mother

\- Describe your relationship with your father

Completely open-ended, yet, is universal to everyone. Being candid in that
area can provide a lot of foundational underpinning to understand someone.

But - would people find it awkward? Would they take offense? Feel pain
thinking about the answer?

As for someone's political opinion in a specific area, I'm worried self-
presentation pressures and social environment crafts us to more heated (or
passive, to not make a stir) for us to conform. In fact, on that subject,
Wikipedia's page on this area is amazing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity)

The thing is - isn't the interesting thing someone's true hardships, needs,
dreams, interpretations of life events, and desires, rather than something
stemming from an idealized image they want to portray others, to be "good"?
When social pressures of trying to say things the "right way", it's not a good
read. Sure, they may be lashing out at others in outrage. Perhaps its very
righteous and personal (most of the time?)

But what if, paradoxically, they're doing it out of pressure to be apart of
the herd so they themselves are not ostracized?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
monitoring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-monitoring)

So I worry that even if we ask sensitive questions, there will be so much
splitting, and so many people who are coy on their responses so as to avoid
the people who really make a fuss of stuff. Maybe we'd find people are scared
to validate their true feelings and needs. What if environment and fear of
being an outcast/ridiculed for showing candor has them in a compliance state?

And that'd take us back to psychoanalysts in the 1940's and 50's :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Horney#Theory_of_neurosi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Horney#Theory_of_neurosis),
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_orientation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_orientation).
It's hard to come up with a new idea in this space.

~~~
isoskeles
Yes, sharing anything about my relationship with my parents would cause a
certain amount of pain. I wouldn't feel like going through that for just
anyone who decides to ask about it.

~~~
filoleg
The act of refusing to answer this question is already giving plenty info that
the person was seeking by asking it. As long as they don't push it after the
refusal, the question has served its purpose, and it is all in good spirit
imo.

I am absolutely fine with receiving those kinds of sensitive questions, as
long as the person asking those is cool about it after hearing "no".

------
29athrowaway
People prefer to quit a job or fire an employee before having a difficult
conversation.

~~~
vitruvian987
Quitting/firing is a difficult conversation to have.

~~~
closeparen
Hardly anyone gets fired that way. Instead they go in the spreadsheet for the
next round of layoffs, which are mechanical and depersonalized.

~~~
authoritarian
>Instead they go in the spreadsheet for the next round of layoffs, which are
mechanical and depersonalized.

I've never worked at a company where anyone was fired that way

------
jmccorm
I've gotten a long ways in my technical career from being able to ask
sensitive questions. (In the business environment, I've focused more on them
being "critical questions".) It has been really great for me, and I've tried
to make it as painless as possible for others. It started simply enough.

For real business reasons, there are things that I either needed to know, or I
needed to be confident that the other person either had the answer to or were
were putting some serious thought to. I wasn't asking sensitive questions just
to embarrass them. I expected them to give me an honest answer (and I helped
make that easier if an honest answer wasn't forthcoming on its own). I learned
that I could trust my team not to take any of my questions out of context, and
they learned that I would never try to take their answers out of context
either.

Here are the big takeaways as best as I've been able to pin them down: it is
all about trust, personal motivation, and intention. These complications are
multiplied by the number of participants (even in situations where one person
is asking a question and one person is answering the question, but multiple
people may be listening). The process is quick and painless when the trust
between the participants is high, the personal motivation (at the cost of
others) is low, the level of trust between everyone is high, and there are
just the two people. (Can it get better than that? Surprisingly, yes. Consider
when one of the participants is a benevolent all-seeing and all-powerful
diety.)

I have to admit, I haven't read the full article. I'd be curious what
dimensions of trust they recorded and how well it coordinated with their
results.

If you've developed all those factors between all the participants, you can
ask just about anything with the minimum of time wasted. As one or more of
these factors break down, the more complicated the conversation becomes. Or
the more process you need to introduce to smooth over the wrinkles. "Hey, I
don't mean to embarrass you, but on the Johnson account it is more important
to get an accurate documentation than to show any kind of regular process.
See? Here is where we've been capturing this for everyone, and this is what's
done with the information." (So then you see how something like transparency
comes into play.)

I think it makes sense when you look at it in those terms. You also need to be
asking questions work asking, and sometimes you're going to be asking
questions that you don't want or need the answer to yourself. You might be
asking to build up trust within a group of people, or you might be asking
because you know that several people really would benefit from knowing
something that they're too conditioned to do on their own. (This is where I
started. And the key is that even if a question is confrontational, you must
never ask in a confrontational tone. The tone of your voice and the content of
your words have to reflect that you're asking because you need to know.
Nothing personal, just business.)

Even still, I hardly consider myself the master. I've never written anything
down on this, but this is the 10,000ft view of what I picked up up over the
years. If you've spotted something along these lines in a book or an article
somewhere, let me know. I'd like to compare notes.

~~~
loopz
You can ask, prod, show, but still managers and decisionmakers will go ahead
and cargo cult, ie. "Agile" and "SAFe". So depends if you are Director or not.
This time it'll be different..

------
ronilan
What is a sensitive question? Not the examples provided. Here’s an
alternative.

Former Secretary of Defense for two presidents Donald Rumsfeld once framed
(brilliantly actually) the possible things we know.

 _... there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know
there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do
not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don 't know we
don't know_ [1]

A while after someone (which I can’t trace back) made an interesting (and
equally brilliant) observation - there is a fourth option - unknown knowns -
that is, things we don’t know we know. In most cases, that person pointed out,
the category contains, things we actually know, but prefer to pretend that we
don’t.

So, what is a sensitive question?

A sensitive question is one for which the answer is an unknown known.

The cost of asking such a question in American society (and, obviously in SV)
is dear. Avoiding them is free.

Ask carefully.

[1] [https://youtu.be/REWeBzGuzCc](https://youtu.be/REWeBzGuzCc)

~~~
chirau
The bit about unknown knowns does not make sense to me, also it seems to
change the point of reference. It is referencing things from third party
perspectives whereas the original ones are referencing from first party.

That is, you are talking other things other entities might not know about me
that I know myself which makes them, from my point of reference, known knowns.
And in the event that I don't know those things myself they just become
unknown unknowns.

If you don't change goalposts and keep the point of reference constant,
unknown knowns wouldn't exist.

Personally, if I actually had to define unknown known from the individual
entity's point of reference it would most probably refer to derived or
calculated values. For example, do I know the product of 171 and 342.45673. Do
I know I could calculate it? Yes. But do I know it by head? No. Which means it
is eventually a known but right now it's still unknown. But even that is a
stretch of a definition.

I am convinced Rumsfeld's initial proposition covers the entire space of
knowledge. Maybe you could give actual examples of unknown knowns from the
individual's perspective.

~~~
rriepe
If your parents are in town and ask where the nearest weed dispensary is, you
might pretend not to know, even though you know. That's an unknown known.

~~~
quelltext
But you still know it. Pretending not to know doesn't render it unknown
knowledge.

To the other person/parents they don't know that you know, but that's looking
at knowledge of party a vs. party b, which is mot quite what all this is
about. Yo your parents it's still a known unknown (hence why they ask you).

I believe the closest to unknown knowns would be temporary loss of knowledge,
where at a given moment you don't manage to make the right connections between
the known knowns. So it's a "could know" given the right moment or
prerequisite calculation step/thought, but right there you don't so it's an
unknown known.

~~~
rriepe
Yeah, I think the add-on is more of a cheeky social commentary.

Biases could also be unknown knowns.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
I'm a regular reader of Ask a Manager
([https://www.askamanager.org/](https://www.askamanager.org/)), and one thing
that comes up over and over is how both managers and employees will avoid
awkward topics ranging from trivial ("your breath smells") to consequential
("you need to step up or you'll be fired!"), to the point of going to extremes
like quitting the job, just to avoid having a genuine conversation with
somebody.

And I'm guilty of this too. I used to work with a dude who did not brush his
teeth and used to wear the same clothes for a week in a row -- and I don't
think anybody ever said a word to him, they just edged away quietly.

~~~
rcurry
The worst one for me was the guy who didn’t wash his hands after using the
restroom. One day, one of my team members told me about this, and I didn’t
believe him, ha ha, so a few days later I’m in the restroom and this guy comes
out of a stall and just walks out the door. So about a week later my guy who’d
complained about it had some problem with one of our other systems, and who do
they send over to help him out? You guessed it - Mr. Doesn’t Wash His Hands.
So I watch this guy sit down at my team member’s keyboard and work on some
stuff with him, then after he leaves my team member gives me this horrified
look and gestures at his keyboard. I straight up just walked over to his cube,
unplugged his keyboard and threw it in the trash and told him “Go tell IT you
need a new keyboard.”

It was easier to just throw away the keyboard than to have that conversation
with someone. What grown adult needs to be told to wash their hands after they
use the toilet? I later learned that almost everyone on the floor knew about
this guy and they were all sickened being around him.

~~~
Yessing
while the disgust is warranted, I can't help but feel that you've created a
toxic culture there.

for example, the Keyboard scene, being horrified because someone touched your
keyboard is not logical behaviour. In fact, the keyboard is probably more
disgusting than the toilet paper.

The actions of your employee were not rational. But by validating them you
create a mob.

"begin sickned/disguested" becomes a behavior of the in-group. Mocking that
guy, overreacting is than encouraged by social validation. These are the same
dynamics as bullying because it is a form of bullying.

Plus, this is exacerbated by your team member ( and maybe you later, just by
asking) going arround bad-mouthing him.

Imagine if everyone started acting hostile towards you and you had no way to
know why?

~~~
jacobolus
You phrased that a lot more gently than I would have. Kudos.

The guy should wash his hands after pooping, but performing a melodrama behind
his back based on a pathological fear of unwashed hands seems extremely
unprofessional.

