Bernardo F. Nunes recently shared something that caught my attention: he reminded everyone that "the people who know me know I like to ask questions." Then he admitted he stopped for a while, because he felt like the difficult person in the room and could almost see the look on people's faces: "Oh no, here we go again" and "Don't make it so complicated."

That confession matters because it describes a quiet, common kind of burnout. Not the exhaustion that comes from doing too much, but the dimming that happens when we edit out a core part of who we are. As Bernardo put it, asking questions is not merely a skill for him. It is how he learns, creates, and helps change things. When he asked fewer questions, he had "less curiosity" and "less fire." That line lands because many workplaces unintentionally reward smooth execution over honest inquiry.

In his post, Bernardo also shared why this matters right now: he is co-hosting conversations with people who challenge the status quo through a new show, De Impact Podcast, touching themes like the strategic role of L&D, skill-based learning, neurodiversity as organizational strength, collective leadership, and using data and behavior to create impactful learning. And he ended with a simple hope: that after listening, you think, "Tomorrow I'll ask that question." Because that is where change begins.

The hidden cost of staying quiet

When you stop asking questions to avoid being labeled "difficult," you do not just reduce friction. You reduce signal.

Questions are how teams surface assumptions, identify risk, and spot opportunities early. Without them, you get:

Unchallenged priorities that drift away from real customer needs
Training programs that measure completion rather than capability
Strategy decks that sound confident but rest on shaky premises
Meetings that feel efficient and produce little learning

Bernardo's description of his "fire" fading is a human version of an organizational problem: curiosity is a renewable resource, but it still needs oxygen. If the environment punishes questions, people conserve them. Over time, that becomes a culture.

The goal is not to ask more questions in general.
The goal is to ask the questions that keep learning alive.

Why questions are not a personality quirk, but a learning system

I like Bernardo's framing that questions are not just a communication style. They are a way of learning and creating.

In Learning and Development (L&D), we often treat learning as content delivery: courses, modules, playbooks. But learning inside organizations is closer to a feedback system:

Notice a gap (performance, clarity, alignment, confidence)
Form a question about why the gap exists
Test a hypothesis (practice, experiment, coaching, data)
Reflect on results
Update behavior and systems

Questions are the switch that turns on steps 2 through 5. Without them, learning becomes passive consumption. With them, learning becomes adaptive.

This is why Bernardo's point connects so strongly to strategic L&D. The most strategic learning teams I've seen do not start with "What course should we build?" They start with "What problem are we trying to solve, and what evidence would convince us it's solved?"

The status quo survives on unasked questions

Bernardo mentioned speaking with people who "question the status quo, challenge it, or even reshape it." That progression is worth unpacking:

Questioning the status quo: noticing inconsistencies and naming them
Challenging the status quo: proposing alternatives and testing them
Reshaping the status quo: changing structures so the new way sticks

Most organizations are reasonably good at the first stage in private and weak at the second stage in public. The third stage takes time, political capital, and collective ownership.

If you want a practical takeaway from Bernardo's post, it is this: asking questions is not a disruption to change. It is the entry point.

Examples of questions that create movement

Here are questions I've seen unlock real progress, especially in L&D and transformation work:

"What are we optimizing for: speed, quality, safety, or learning?"
"What are we assuming about our learners that might be wrong?"
"Which behaviors, not activities, would show this program is working?"
"Who is this system working well for, and who is it failing?"
"If we removed one step in this process, what would break?"

These questions are not about being clever. They are about making invisible constraints visible.

Skill-based learning needs a mindset shift, not just a taxonomy

One of the podcast themes Bernardo listed is the mindset shift behind skill-based learning. That detail matters because many companies try to implement skill-based approaches by building a skills framework and calling it done.

A skills taxonomy can be useful, but it is not the transformation. The transformation is cultural:

From job titles to capabilities
From credentials to demonstrated performance
From annual reviews to continuous feedback
From static training plans to dynamic development pathways

If you want to know whether your organization is ready for skill-based learning, ask:

"Do we treat skills as labels, or as something we practice, observe, and improve?"

That question naturally leads to the next: what data will you use, and how will you avoid turning people into spreadsheets?

Neurodiversity as organizational strength starts with better questions

Bernardo also highlighted neurodiversity as a strength. This topic often gets reduced to accommodations, which are important, but incomplete.

The deeper opportunity is to redesign work so different cognitive styles can contribute at full power. That starts with questions like:

"Where do we equate professionalism with one communication style?"
"Which roles require deep focus, and how often do we interrupt it?"
"Are our hiring processes measuring capability, or comfort with our norms?"

When leaders ask these questions, they shift from compliance to performance. They stop asking, "How do we fit people into our system?" and start asking, "How do we build a system that gets the best from more kinds of minds?"

Collective leadership: making questions safe to ask

Another theme Bernardo named is collective leadership. In practice, collective leadership is less about everyone being a leader and more about distributing sense-making.

Sense-making requires questions. But people only ask real questions when it is safe to:

Not know
Disagree respectfully
Surface risks early
Name tradeoffs without punishment

If you lead a team, a simple experiment is to change how you respond to questions. Instead of answering immediately, try:

"What makes you ask that now?"
"What do you think is the real constraint here?"
"What would we need to learn to be confident?"

You are not delaying decisions. You are teaching the team that inquiry is part of execution.

Data and behavior: the impact loop Bernardo is pointing to

Bernardo mentioned using data and behavior for impactful learning. This is where many programs get stuck because they measure what is easy:

Attendance
Completion rates
Satisfaction scores

Those are not useless, but they are not impact. Impact lives closer to behavior change and outcomes. The key questions become:

"Which specific behaviors predict success in this role?"
"How will we observe them in real work?"
"What supports will make the new behavior easier than the old one?"

If you want learning to be impactful, you have to connect insight to practice, and practice to feedback. Data helps, but only when it serves a learning conversation rather than replacing it.

"Tomorrow I'll ask that question": a small act with big consequences

Bernardo's closing hope is the most actionable part of the whole post. It gives you a single next step.

So here is a simple way to do it without becoming the person who derails every meeting:

Ask one clarifying question before you propose a solution
Make it specific to the goal, not the person
Offer a hypothesis, not a verdict

For example:

"To hit this deadline, what are we choosing not to do?"
"What does success look like in observable terms?"
"What would change my mind if I'm wrong?"

These questions create forward motion because they reduce ambiguity. They are not complexity for complexity's sake. They are simplicity earned.

Final thought

Bernardo F. Nunes is right to reclaim his questioning nature as fuel. Organizations do not just need doers. They need people willing to ask what everyone else is thinking but filtering out.

If your curiosity has been getting quieter, take Bernardo's challenge seriously: tomorrow, ask the question anyway.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Bernardo F. Nunes. View the original LinkedIn post →