Part 3 of “What’s Wrong with Being Wrong”
“What day is it?”
“Saturday,” Leland told his mom.
Brief pause. Then: “Is it Saturday all day?”
We both had to bite our lips to keep from chuckling right there on the phone. Not because we were laughing at her—heck no. Rather, she delighted us. You see, Leland’s mom has dementia and while this question seems so obvious to the rest of us, it wasn’t obvious to her. And honestly, when you think about it, it is a brilliant question of sorts. After all, days do have distinct parts, right?
But what got me was not the question itself. It was how completely safe she felt asking it. She knew somehow, even with everything that is slipping away from her, we wouldn’t roll our eyes, sigh dramatically, or hit her with that “seriously?” tone that makes people want to crawl under a rock. That got me thinking about something that’s bugged me throughout my 14,000+ mediations. It is that we’ve created a world where people are terrified of asking questions because they might sound “stupid.” But here’s the thing, that phrase might be one of the most destructive word combinations in the English language.
Your Brain on “Stupid Questions”
Want to know what happens in your head when you’re about to ask something but you’re worried it might sound dumb? Your amygdala—basically your brain’s panic button—starts firing as if it is being attacked by a deadly predator. In fact, Dr. Naomi Eisenberger at UCLA, discovered something intriguing – when we’re afraid of social rejection or humiliation, our brains literally treat it like we’re about to get mauled by a bear. The same neural pathways light up whether someone’s about to punch you in the face or dismiss your question with a condescending smirk. How unfortunate is that?! You see, your brain doesn’t distinguish between a deadly attack and a bruised ego. Threat is threat.
So, what does your brain do when it thinks you’re under attack? GREAT question I write with a smile – it shuts you up. Every time someone responds to your question with “I already told you that” or “Why are you even asking that?” or my personal favorite, “Are you being serious right now?”, your brain files that away in its “never again” folder. Next time you have a question, that little voice whispers: “Nope. Remember what happened last time? Keep your mouth shut.”
The Price Tag on Silence
Here’s where this gets expensive, really fast. Researcher, Amy Edmondson, at Harvard found something also intriguing. She found teams with high psychological safety report 47% more errors than teams who do not have safety. Before you start thinking the teams with psychological safety have the problem, let it be clear, they’re not screwing up more. They’re just able to be honest about the screw-ups that are happening everywhere. The “safe” teams are catching problems. The other teams are hiding their errors until they explode.
Wells Fargo is one example. Employees were so terrified of not hitting impossible sales targets they started creating fake accounts. This cost Wells Fargo a staggering $3 billion in fines. Another example is Boeing. Workers had safety concerns for years but were too scared to speak up. Sadly, we all know how that ended…
This isn’t just about hurt feelings. When people are afraid to ask “Wait, are we sure about this?” organizations hemorrhage money.
When Your Brain Says “Nope”
The neuroscience here is both fascinating and alarming. When your brain perceives social threats, like the possibility of looking stupid, it doesn’t just make you quiet. It literally triggers your stress response system. It is the same cortisol dump you’d get if you were running from a lion. But here’s the sick joke: you can’t run from the fear of looking dumb. You can’t fight it. You can only sit there and pretend you totally understand what’s happening when you absolutely do not. And everyone around you interprets your terrified silence for agreement.
What Safety Actually Looks Like
Do you know what it looks like when someone feels genuinely safe to ask anything? It looks like Leland’s mom asking if Saturday lasts all day. It looks like the new person raising their hand when everyone else is nodding along. It looks like the veteran employee questioning something they’ve been doing for years because something feels off.
It doesn’t sound like, “That’s a stupid question.” EVER. Instead, it sounds like “Good question” or “I’m glad you asked.” or even just “Hmm, let me think about that.” Sometimes it’s as simple as “I don’t know either—want to figure it out together?” The magic happens when you stop categorizing questions as smart or stupid and start seeing them for what they actually are: someone’s genuine attempt to understand something.
The Brain Flip
Here’s what’s wild: when people feel truly safe, their brains literally rewire the response. Dr. Matthew Lieberman’s research shows that psychological safety activates the same reward pathways as other good stuff. Asking questions in a supportive environment actually feels good to your neural circuits. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex, the genius, decision-making part of your brain, can finally do its job because it hasn’t been shut down by the amygdala’s panic attack. But, for this to work, we must create that safety first. And spoiler alert: it’s not built through company policies or inspiring posters in the break room.
The Micro-Moments That Matter
After sitting through thousands of conversations where things either went sideways or suddenly clicked, I’ve learned that psychological safety gets built in tiny moments. It’s how you respond when someone asks something that seems ridiculously obvious to you. Can you pause and ponder their question? Can you remember that their brain is coming at this from a completely different angle than yours? Can you recognize that what’s crystal clear to you might be genuinely confusing to them? Or do you let your ego take over because feeling superior is more fun than being helpful?
Look, I get it. Sometimes questions seem so basic, we can wonder how this person manages to dress themselves in the morning. But here’s what I’ve learned: the person asking probably knows something you don’t, or they’re seeing an angle you’re missing, or they’re about to catch a problem everyone else walked right past. Leland’s mom asking if Saturday lasts all day might not be so much about being confused as her being careful. She’s double-checking her understanding of something that’s become uncertain for her. That’s not stupid. That’s smart.
What If We Got This Right?
Imagine if every workplace operated like our phone call with Leland’s mom. What if every question, no matter how basic it seemed to everyone else, was met with patience and genuine curiosity instead of judgment? Imagine how many disasters we could prevent if people felt safe enough to ask, “Is this actually working?” How much could we learn if people weren’t terrified of admitting what they don’t know?
The research is pretty clear: when people feel safe to ask questions, they think better, learn faster, and catch problems before they become catastrophes. When they feel judged, their brains literally shut down the pathways they need for good thinking.
The Only Stupid Thing
There are no stupid questions. There are just people who’ve been made to feel stupid for asking them. And in a world changing faster than any of us can keep up with, we literally cannot afford that kind of silence. The question isn’t whether what you’re asking sounds smart or dumb to other people. The question is whether you’re brave enough to ask at all. Because honestly? In a room full of people too scared to wonder about anything, the person asking questions—even basic ones—is the smartest person there.
References:
Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: a common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294-300.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.
Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Social: Why our brains are wired to connect. Crown Publishers.
Woo, C. W., Koban, L., Kross, E., Lindquist, M. A., Banich, M. T., Ruzic, L., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., & Wager, T. D. (2014). Separate neural representations for physical pain and social rejection. Nature Communications, 5, 5380.