Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions! The Questions You're Living Inside: How to Stop Answering Questions You Never Chose-Ken Woodward #76
Mar 26, 2026
A meditation on how the questions we inherit shape the rooms we live in. Metaphors about prefabricated walls and blueprints reveal hidden assumptions in everyday queries. Stories about a misheard street exchange and a teaching moment with the Right Question Institute show how questions transfer agency. A simple practice is offered: pause, read the blueprint, and decide who built the question.
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Questions Carry Built In Blueprints
- Every question carries an embedded blueprint of assumptions that predefines which answers are possible.
- Ken Woodward compares questions to prefabricated wall panels on a flatbed truck that shape space before anyone steps inside it.
Assumptions Determine Possible Answers
- Load-bearing assumptions in questions determine which solutions appear sensible before any answer is offered.
- Changing a single assumption can move you into a completely different conceptual 'building' with new possible answers.
Mishearing Built A Wall Not A Door
- Ken Woodward misheard a teenager during his 2,085-mile D.C. walk and answered the wrong question, causing unintended harm.
- He thought the teen asked about “white-skinned lives” but the teen, light-skinned and Black, asked about belonging and being seen.