Why Being Curious And Asking Questions Are Essential In Life

Uncommon Sense by William R. Brody

Johns Hopkins University Press

William R. Brody’s Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways is the book we all need right now, at least from my vantage point. Brody, a physician-scientist and the former president of Johns Hopkins University, asks his readers to slow down and reconsider how they make decisions, especially the ones that feel obvious. The book focuses on exposing the assumptions that guide our thinking, and Brody is particularly good at showing how often our assumptions are incomplete and sometimes wrong.

One of the most poignant examples he shares is how people think about salary. He notes that “among the most common mistakes is making choices based entirely on salary. If the job pays more, it must be better for my long-term career and financial success.” He then pushes the reader to reconsider what wealth actually looks like: “Ask a group of college students which groups of people become wealthy, and they will tell you movie stars and sports heroes and medical professionals. But the truth is lots of high-salaried people end up broke.” Instead, he argues that wealth is built through ownership, that is, “businesses, intellectual property, real estate” – and that even those without extraordinary means can participate through stock ownership, “buying small pieces of wealth-generating properties and ideas.”

Brody grounds this idea in his own life. Early in his career, he was offered a position that would have paid “more than ten times my faculty salary,” but his wife told him, “Bill, don’t do it. You won’t be happy.” He admits it was a "difficult choice," but it forced him to confront the deeper question of what actually matters in a career. That moment became a turning point: “I never again looked at salary as a means to happiness – or wealth.” Brody’s story is simple, but it forms the foundation of the larger argument of his book – that good decisions require stepping back from the most obvious metric.

Brody also discusses education in the book. He argues that much of higher education is structured around solving problems that already have answers, which limits how students learn to think. He recalls the influence of MIT professor and founder of the Bose Corporation, Amar Bose, who told students, “Don’t worry about getting the right answers. I already know the answer, and I am not interested in that. I want to know how you think.” That approach, Brody suggests, is rare. Instead, “education today is about teaching to the test and checking off the correct multiple-choice answer. Solving problems we already know.” He adds, “While this approach may be more efficient, it has the unfortunate consequence of only giving us more of the same.”

What Brody advocates instead can be difficult to implement. It means giving students problems “where the answer isn’t known, especially where an exact solution isn’t known, so students have to improvise to try to find a workable solution.” This kind of shift moves learning away from replication and toward exploration. Students need to learn to question frameworks and not merely work within them, as true insight comes from asking questions.

Brody’s concerns about narrow thinking reappear in his discussion of data. He does not dismiss data, but he is clear about its limits: “data is not reality.” He adds, “The existing data only tell you what exists; they don’t tell you what may be. Data doesn’t dream.” This line captures, in many ways, concerns about how decision-making has shifted. When leaders rely too heavily on data, they risk reinforcing existing patterns rather than imagining alternatives. Brody offers an example that pertains to electronic health records. He shares that what began as a system meant to improve care and detect patterns early instead became “a vast electronic medical billing machine,” shaped more by market incentives than the original vision.

For me, the main underlying idea in Uncommon Sense is Brody’s insistence that we be curious and why that is so important. He encourages readers to pay attention to what does not quite make sense, even when it is inconvenient. He states, “Every so often, you come across a fact that is odd, that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem to make sense. It is easier to just shrug our shoulders and let the anomalies slide.” However, using the metaphor of a “turtle on a fencepost," Brody reminds us that when something is out of place, it is usually there for a reason, and asking why can lead to unexpected insight.

Through Uncommon Sense, Brody wants readers to “develop a healthy distrust for ‘experts.’” He wants us to move through the world asking, “Why is that so? Is this really true?” He believes that better thinking requires more effort than we often give it, and the stakes, whether in careers, education, or leadership, are higher than they first appear.