Throughout my career, I’ve led UX teams, taught UX courses, and facilitated innovation workshops for global brands. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that expertise is essential, but it’s not enough on its own.

The limit of expertise applies to everyone at every level. We are all leaders. I always tell my UX students that they are the CEO’s of their projects. They should approach each one with a blend of what they know and a desire to learn what they don’t. True leadership means spending time with users, customers, and internal teams to understand their experiences and pain points, while working in small increments to design and test possible solutions that address those points.

When UX leaders feel obligated to know all the answers up front, the pool of possible solutions remains limited. This mindset can become a team or company culture. When leaders balance expertise with curiosity by asking questions, exploring possibilities, and challenging assumptions, that pool expands to include many possibilities.

These lessons are central to my new book, Question to Learn: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Career, Team, and Organization (2025), which draws on my experiences at PwC, MTV/Viacom, General Assembly, and Stanford’s d.school to show how questions, used intentionally, can reshape how work gets done.

Why Does Curiosity Complete Expertise?

Early in my career, I invited a well-regarded web expert, Steve, to help us with a website redesign project. He walked into the room and immediately told us exactly what to do without asking a single question. His advice was rooted in general best practices, but it did not fit our situation. Expertise alone was not enough.

I’ve seen this pattern in countless organizations: deep knowledge that is misapplied because no one paused to ask why or for whom. Expertise defines what we know; curiosity reveals what we need to understand. When the two work together, solutions become relevant, creative, and lasting.

I saw this perfectly in a ski shop once when I was looking to buy skis. Rick, the salesperson, started with user research. He was a skier and ski shop employee, not a UX professional, but he did this instinctively. He asked about my goals, my kids’ skill levels, and how we spent our ski days. He listened, combined my answers with his wealth of skiing expertise, and recommended exactly what we needed.

Rick’s approach led to a great solution, but he could have made a similar impact if he hadn’t skied every mountain, maybe more of an impact. A novice skier with some experience and proficiency can fill in critical details through curiosity. Less experience can be a strength because it can lead to ideas an experienced person might not have.

As a UX designer, it’s important to maintain a mentality like it’s the first day on the job. This facilitates totally new ideas.

How Can Curiosity Change a Culture?

Curiosity does not just improve decision-making. It transforms culture.

When I presented my roadmap to the CEO at a new company, I thought I had all the answers. Then the CEO asked, “Is this what our customers want?” I froze. I did not know. He didn’t either. Instead of seeing that as a failure on my part, he saw it as an opportunity to learn. He asked, “How can we find out?” That question shifted the tone from certainty to discovery and created an opportunity to collaborate.

Leaders who model that kind of humility, balancing knowledge with curiosity, signal that exploration is valued. I have seen this again and again in my workshops. When leaders are open to learning, teams feel safe challenging assumptions, surfacing inefficiencies, and sharing ideas. That is how organizations move from recycling old ideas to generating breakthroughs.

Danielle, a leader I interviewed, learned this firsthand. At her previous job, her questions were often dismissed. In her new role, she asked, “Why have we been doing this process?” Her CEO admitted, “I have no idea. I have been waiting for someone to ask that!” That single question exposed redundant work and reenergized the team. It took some courage on Danielle’s part to ask that first question, but it led to a culture change in the organization.

What Can We Borrow from Other Disciplines?

Improv comedy involves a rapid process of testing ideas, assessing audience reactions, and refining the ideas. In improv, those ideas may be characters to play, scenes to act out, or even a single spoken line. Improv actors are well-versed in acting and singing, but they hold every idea loosely, constantly seeking audience feedback and input. UX practitioners can borrow a lot from improv teams.

In improv, there is a principle called “Yes, and…” that reminds people to build on ideas rather than block them. Comments like “that won’t work” or “we tried that last time” are common in UX projects, but asking about what didn’t work or why last time failed pushes the team to think in new ways, combining knowledge of past efforts with curiosity about new ones.

Along with improv, design thinking offers powerful frameworks for problem-solving. Design thinking is all about having empathy for users and iterating towards possible solutions.

GE industrial designer and design thinker Doug Dietz faced a challenge at a children’s hospital: 80% of the children who required a medically necessary MRI had to be sedated. It was an awful experience for everyone involved, including the kids, their parents, and staff. Rather than relying solely on UX best practices, Doug and his team observed kids, parents, and staff go through the experience. They asked questions and developed empathy. They even walked around the MRI room on their knees to gain the perspective of a kid entering the big, scary MRI room.

This led to unexpected ideas. They prototyped and tested possible solutions, ultimately redesigning the MRI experience to resemble experiences like being a pirate on a pirate ship, with painted MRI machines, props, and costumes. The result? MRI sedation rates dropped from 80% to nearly zero. That is what happens when knowledge and curiosity work hand in hand.

How Does Someone Become Curious?

We were all curious kids. It was a survival mechanism and developmental tool. We learned through play. We asked questions because we wanted to progress from not knowing to knowing. Our motives were pure curiosity. Over time, self-consciousness crept in, limiting questions for fear of embarrassment or drawing attention. As professionals, we often feel compelled to know the answers. Asking questions can feel like a sign of weakness, not a strength.

When that happens, find your people. It’s less about rediscovering curiosity and more about finding and fostering an environment that welcomes curiosity. It will take some courage, but chances are, others will share your curiosity. It may just need a jump start.

Becoming or rediscovering curiosity involves asking questions you don’t know the answers to. Motives like showing off one’s own knowledge, exposing someone else’s lack of knowledge, or simply checking the box of speaking up all involve unproductive ways to question.

If you can peel away those layers and tap into that pure curiosity we had as kids, collaboration and innovation are supercharged.

What If the Clues Are Hard to Find?

Curiosity isn’t a box to check. It’s not a phase in a project. It’s an always-on practice because user needs evolve. The clues may not always be clear, which is why a variety of research and iteration approaches must be applied. UX designers cannot simply rely on quantitative research to understand user needs. User needs are an essential piece of the puzzle, but they only reveal the what of the answer. To get to the why of an answer, qualitative research is key. It reveals why something is happening, that is, why a feature is confusing or not, or why a product is used or not. Another type of research that’s critical hasn’t been named yet. I’ve called it “inspiration research.” After understanding user needs and beginning to think about solutions, a round of exploration can boost creativity.

Inspiration research should go beyond the obvious places. Direct comparisons to competitors are helpful, but so are ideas from totally different disciplines. A storefront display might spark ideas for a web interface. A ski salesperson’s approach might spark ideas for how to approach a web redesign.

The clues may be tricky to find, but a curious mindset and desire to understand the whole story can help put the clues together.

How Does Curiosity Come Together for a UX Professional?

UX professionals are leaders. Every effort involves improving some kind of experience. To do that, even the most experienced designer must remain curious and hold ideas loosely. Do everything possible to imagine yourself in the user’s situation. Research doesn’t just include information you can capture on a plan. It also includes empathy. Empathy is what keeps people going when a project hits snags. Wanting to solve a problem for someone leads to a variety of ideas and iterations.

Culture is key. Curiosity must be part of a team culture for real innovation to take place. It should happen at every level, but senior team members play a key role. A leader who is willing to ask questions they don’t know the answers to will foster a culture where exploration becomes the norm.

The good news? We all led with curiosity as children. We had no other motives. If we can tap into that curiosity, we can become true problem solvers.

Resources

Lalley, Joe. 2025. Question to Learn: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Career, Team, and Organization. Manuscripts LLC.