One of the pleasures of writing is discovering that a good question often survives much longer than an easy answer.
Some of the questions on this page have occupied me for years.
Others have emerged only recently.
A few may eventually prove to be wrong.
I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
This page isn’t a list of conclusions.
It’s a map of where my thinking is currently taking me.
Why I Publish Questions
Many websites present certainty.
I’m more interested in curiosity.
Questions have shaped almost everything I’ve done.
Writing software.
Managing programmes.
Editing memoirs.
Exploring artificial intelligence.
Writing books.
Again and again, progress began not with an answer but with a better question.
I think that’s still true today.
Current Questions
When does information become knowledge?
We often use the words interchangeably.
I’m increasingly convinced they describe very different things.
Information can exist for years without ever becoming knowledge that someone can safely use.
Why do some perfectly reasonable AI answers still lead to poor decisions?
The answer may have very little to do with reasoning.
Perhaps it begins much earlier.
With the knowledge supplied.
What happens when AI understands more about its own software than its creators?
This question has become increasingly important to me.
If people remain responsible for systems they no longer fully understand, what happens to professional judgement?
I currently call this The Comprehension Boundary.
Why do readers experience memoirs so differently from writers?
Writers remember living their stories.
Readers encounter them for the first time.
Understanding that difference continues to fascinate me.
Can preparation become more important than intelligence?
For many years we assumed that better decisions required more information.
Artificial intelligence makes me wonder whether better preparation may prove even more important than greater intelligence.
How much uncertainty should professionals tolerate?
We often behave as though uncertainty is failure.
Perhaps uncertainty, honestly prepared, is actually one of the most useful things we can present.
Can organisations prepare knowledge continuously rather than repeatedly?
Many organisations seem to solve the same problems over and over again.
I’m interested in whether preparation can become continuous rather than constantly restarting.
Is professional judgement changing?
For centuries professionals were expected to understand the systems they used.
What happens if future systems become too complex for complete human understanding?
Does judgement itself begin to change?
Questions That Have Changed My Thinking
Some questions have already led me somewhere unexpected.
For example:
I originally thought AI’s biggest challenge was intelligence.
Today I think preparation may prove to be the more important problem.
That isn’t the answer I expected to find.
Those are often the most interesting discoveries.
Questions That May Never Have Final Answers
Some questions probably don’t have permanent solutions.
Instead they become better questions over time.
I think that’s perfectly acceptable.
Progress sometimes means improving the quality of our questions rather than pretending to possess complete answers.
How I Work With Questions
I try not to ask questions simply because they sound interesting.
I look for questions that change practical work.
Questions that influence:
writing;
editing;
professional judgement;
organisational knowledge;
artificial intelligence;
decision-making.
Those are the questions worth spending years exploring.
If You Have A Better Question
One of the reasons I enjoy publishing questions is that someone occasionally asks a better one.
When that happens, the original question often disappears.
That’s progress.
If something on this page makes you think of a better question, I’d genuinely like to hear it.
Continue Exploring
Many of these questions eventually become:
articles;
book chapters;
talks;
practical examples.
If you’d like to see where several of them have already led, I’d recommend:
100 Questions That CKP Answers
Closing Thought
I’ve gradually come to believe that curiosity deserves more respect than certainty.
Certainty often finishes conversations.
Good questions begin them.
This page will continue changing because I hope I never stop discovering better questions to ask.