Reading for Lifelong Learning and Leadership: A PICPA Blog Series

Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It by Ian Leslie

By James J. Caruso, CPA (inactive), CGMA

“The practice of curiosity is vital to a happy and well-lived life,” writes Ian Leslie in Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It. Curiosity is the engine of lifelong learning and, as the subtitle suggests, it is as important for our professional success as it is for our personal lives.  

Leslie explains that there are two types of curiosity: diversive and epistemic. Diversive curiosity is the initial, superficial attraction to novelty; epistemic curiosity is a deeper, disciplined, enduring quest for knowledge. Leslie refers to curiosity as “The Knowledge Emotion,” likening it to an itch we have to scratch, driving us to search for understanding, even without an explicit obligation. When applied to work, such curiosity-fueled discretionary effort drives engagement.

Curiosity is stimulated not by an absence of knowledge, but by a gap in knowledge. We cannot become engaged in a topic we know nothing about. Basic information is a prerequisite to sparking curiosity. The more we learn about a subject, the more we become aware of the gaps in our knowledge and the more curious we get about what we don’t know. “Knowledge drives curiosity as much as curiosity drives the acquisition of knowledge,” says Leslie.  

Once we recognize how much we don’t know, we realize that “knowledge is inherently unreliable” [emphasis is Leslie’s] and learn intellectual humility. As a result, curiosity counteracts overconfidence and overcomes biases by encouraging us to question our assumptions. The continuous feedback from curiosity and learning creates serendipitous collisions and connections among ideas that drive innovation. “Curiosity prepares us for epiphanies by making us aware of our own blind spots, interested in our own ignorance,” explains Leslie.  

Curiosity about a wide range of subjects develops what IBM calls “T-shaped knowledge,” or the fusion of specialist and generalist (respectively, the vertical and horizontal segments of the “T”), that enables us to see the big picture in our professional roles and translate our technical knowledge for nonfinancial people. In a complex world, we don’t necessarily know what knowledge may turn out to be useful. Leslie suggests we “spread our cognitive bets,” take risks, and allow some cognitive distraction. Unfortunately, demanding workloads and the relentless focus on maximum efficiency (and, at professional services firms, billable hours) can discourage the pursuit of curiosities.  

The deeply curious can spend a lifetime pondering questions that have no definitive answers. These mysteries, as Leslie defines them, are full of complexity and ambiguity, and sustain curiosity. He contrasts “mysteries” with “puzzles,” which may be complicated, but are orderly and have definite solutions. Leslie claims there is a cultural tendency to favor puzzles over mysteries because it is satisfying when there is just one answer to a question. But by focusing only on one answer we can miss the forest for the trees. More disdainfully, Leslie observes, “Businesspeople prefer to frame their problems as puzzles, because puzzles and their solutions are more easily articulated in a few bullet points on a PowerPoint.” Accounting and financial reporting may indeed be merely puzzles, but using that information to draw actionable insights to influence business performance and strategy is analogous to an engaging mystery.

Online existence is both a boon and a threat to curiosity. Texts, emails, and social media posts are shiny objects that trigger curiosity, but mostly of the superficial, diversive variety. The internet, sadly, also has conditioned us to demand answers in a few clicks, destroying the capacity for the slower, difficult, and sometimes frustrating process of real learning. “Anyone who stops learning facts for himself because he can Google them later is literally making himself stupid,” warns Leslie. Internet searches return a collection of facts, but memorization builds a scaffolding where new information can stick. The internet is an expansive tool for indulging epistemic curiosity, but paradoxically it also limits serendipity and discovery as searches become more efficient and narrower, with everyone accessing the same information. Similar insidious processes are at work in our professional lives. We lose our familiarity with numbers because we can always just look them up, and in companies with well-integrated systems everyone sees information filtered the same way. I may be approaching heresy here, but perhaps there is value in environments with disparate systems, where workers can follow their curiosities and gain insight from their own analyses and interpretations of the data.  

Leslie observes that “Modern companies need employees who are keen learners, able to adapt to new challenges, collaborate with experts from different areas, and add to their skills as they progress. Employees who aren’t good at those things may soon find themselves replaced by a robot or reorganized out of a job. Specifically, human traits such as creativity, insight, and the ability to ask probing questions are at a premium.”  

Not everyone has the innate epistemic curiosity to land them in the sought-after group. The desire to make sense of the world is a natural human trait, Leslie says, but many take shortcuts instead of intellectual scenic routes. Curiosity can, however, be nurtured by avoiding complacency; accumulating T-shaped knowledge (including by reading widely); asking penetrating “why” questions; toggling between action and abstraction, or between details and the big picture; and cultivating a mindful interest in the mundane. To further infuse curiosity in your team, hire intellectually curious people (the quality of a candidate’s questions during an interview are a good indicator – something to remember when you are on the other side of the table).

A curious life is a life well-lived – and a life with job security. As Leslie puts it, “No computer, however sophisticated, can yet be said to be curious.”  

James J. Caruso, CPA (inactive), CGMA, is a member of the Pennsylvania CPA Journal Editorial Board. He can be reached at Jim_Caruso@outlook.com.

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