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OPINION
The case for curiosity
“T his year’s interns are bold.” It was only two weeks into our summer internship program, and I’d heard some form of this sentiment from multiple people. This time it was from one of our project managers, who had been cornered by a few of our interns and grilled about his compensation. Encouraging curiosity at work turns tough questions into opportunities to build trust, share knowledge, and strengthen engagement.
Shelby Harvey
Although he was surprised to have been asked so bluntly, he wasn’t offended. If anything, he seemed impressed. “When I was an intern, I never would have thought to ask that!” It’s true – so often, we consider asking tough questions to be an unspoken corporate taboo. In my experience, HR professionals (such as myself) are especially likely to clutch our pearls over an employee asking a bold question. It’s far easier to give a vague answer and move on, rather than misstep or say the wrong thing that could land us, or the company, in hot water. Yet so often, I hear leaders express frustration that employees don’t seem to grasp the full picture. We expect people to inherently understand corporate etiquette, while ignoring that each organization’s culture and norms are different. Which then begs the
question: how can we encourage productive curiosity in the workplace? UNDERSTAND THE WHY. It’s completely normal for your initial reaction to a probing question to be one of defensiveness. We’ve been socially conditioned to interpret being questioned as a challenge to authority. Instead of shutting down, try meeting their curiosity with your own. The project manager I mentioned earlier is an example of how to do this well. When asked a pointed question about his salary, rather than assuming the worst – that the interns were being nosey and prying, or trying to gain leverage – he first asked why they were asking him. It turned out the intern’s school wasn’t sharing salary data, and they had no frame of reference for what to expect when starting their
See SHELBY HARVEY, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 13, 2025, ISSUE 1605
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