I recently volunteered some time to advise a charity on the challenges they were facing with organisational performance. The issue, the CEO stated, was declining morale, departmental disruptions which she felt should be avoidable, and everyone was extremely busy, yet little seemed to be getting done. After meeting with senior managers, it quickly became apparent that several people were taking the 'blank slate' approach in which people think they can drive success by questioning any and all established practices, regardless of their merit.
When I asked why there was so much relentless questioning, managers asserted that a key to transformation is to question processes and challenge assumptions. One manager even quoted a past article I wrote on Better Questions Make for Better Decisions in which I had observed:
The role of managers—particularly senior ones—is to help other managers and employees explore ideas they didn't realise needed exploring.
While an author is always flattered when someone has read their work, I also felt that my thinking was being misapplied. If for no other reason than unlike other professionals—psychologists, philosophers, lawyers, historians, or medical doctors—most managers are not formally trained in the art of questioning. This is not only problematic, but highly costly for organisations.
The notion that managers should challenge everything—regardless of their expertise—has become increasingly prevalent in organisational life; often justified under the guise of 'there are no stupid questions'. This approach assumes that success emerges from questioning even the most esteemed individuals and expert knowledge within a team or organisation. However, as anyone with a decent understanding of organisational behaviour will know, managerial ignorance combined with an indiscriminate challenge to existing knowledge structures is a heady mix that can create dysfunction rather than innovation:
Until senior managers become aware of the ways they reason defensively, any change activity is likely to be just a fad.
Chris Argyris
Rather than treating managerial ignorance combined with relentless questioning as an asset, effective leadership requires competence, humility, and an ability to ask meaningful questions that drive constructive change. Organisations benefit more from appointing leaders who understand the nuances of their field, rather than managers who engage in performative questioning.
The Blank Slate Fallacy in Organisational Management
The Myth of Universal Fresh Perspective
One of the core assumptions underlying the blank slate approach is that new managers, by virtue of their outsider status, bring a valuable fresh perspective. While fresh perspectives can be useful in avoiding groupthink, research shows that a complete lack of contextual knowledge often results in poor decision-making. When managers lack domain expertise, their ability to critically assess existing processes is limited, making them susceptible to rejecting effective practices on gut instinct alone—often without viable alternatives.
A study by Amy Edmondson on psychological safety in teams found that environments where managers encourage open questioning and learning—rather than indiscriminate challenge—are more conducive to innovation and problem-solving. In contrast, when questioning is deployed without regard for existing expertise, employees experience frustration and disengagement. Particularly when employees fear censure if they challenge the blank slate approach:
… employees who fear significant personal losses from speaking up (e.g., restricted career mobility, loss of support from superiors and peers) are likely to choose "defensive" silence… After all, most employees lack the courage or commitment to challenge managers who have signaled unwillingness to accept input from below.
James Detert & Ethan Burris
This suggests that critical inquiry must be informed, rather than arbitrary, to be effective.
The Disruption of Organisational Knowledge Structures
Organisations function as complex knowledge systems, relying on accumulated expertise, tacit knowledge, and social capital to sustain performance. When new managers assume that all existing knowledge is subject to questioning, they risk dismantling these structures without understanding their value.
In Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton highlight that knowledge-based organisations thrive when they leverage expertise rather than dismiss it. The imposition of a blank slate approach often disrupts workflow efficiency, forcing employees to spend time justifying basic operational decisions instead of engaging in productive work. Moreover, the tendency of some managers to treat all knowledge as equally questionable can lead to a paradox where truly valuable insights are ignored, while trivial points are endlessly.
The Impact on Organisational Morale
An approach that prioritises indiscriminate questioning can undermine employee confidence and psychological safety. When competent employees are forced to repeatedly defend established practices against uninformed critique, they experience frustration, reduced engagement, and even burnout.
Moreover, ethical leadership is rooted in procedural fairness—ensuring that decision-making respects expertise and the contributions of employees. Managers who dismiss existing knowledge in favour of performative scepticism violate this principle, leading to resentment and reduced organisational commitment.
The Problem of Blame Culture
A further ethical concern arises when blank slate managers use their ignorance as a justification for blame-shifting. When organisational failures occur, incompetent managers often attribute problems to junior staff rather than acknowledging their own lack of understanding. This dynamic creates a blame culture, reducing trust and psychological safety within teams.
By contrast, effective leaders focus on removing obstacles rather than assigning blame. Competent leaders recognise that their role is not to challenge for the sake of it but to ask questions that lead to constructive change and empowerment.
Developing Informed Leaders Who Remove Blockers
Rather than appointing managers who challenge everything indiscriminately, organisations should prioritise leaders who:
- Possess Domain Knowledge: Leaders with relevant expertise can distinguish between necessary and redundant challenges, avoiding unnecessary disruption.
- Demonstrate Emotional Intelligence: Leaders who display empathy, active listening, and self-awareness create high-performing teams.
- Ask Meaningful Questions: Competent leaders do not question for the sake of it, instead they inquire in ways that reveal blind spots and drive problem-solving.
- Remove Barriers Rather Than Blame Staff: Effective leaders focus on addressing structural issues rather than scapegoating employees for systemic inefficiencies.
- Challenge Must Begin At The Top: Directors and Executives must be willing to question their own approach and capabilities before questioning the processes and competence of others. Accountability does not truly exist when it is only applied to more junior staff.
Organisations that prioritise competent and sensitive leadership benefit from higher employee engagement, improved decision-making, and more sustainable growth. This approach aligns with ethical leadership frameworks that emphasise respect for expertise, fairness, and a commitment to long-term organisational health. A process that relies on a combination of innate cognitive structures, prior experience, and established frameworks rather than a passive reception of data.
Just as Kantian epistemology refutes the notion of an entirely unstructured mind, so too must management theory reject the idea that leaders should start from a position of complete neutrality, waiting for external inputs to dictate strategy. Cognitive science and behavioural economics confirm that managers operate with heuristics, mental models, and, critically, industry-specific knowledge that allow them to interpret complex information efficiently. Furthermore, evolutionary psychology suggests that human decision-making is shaped by adaptive mechanisms honed over time, meaning that the best organisational leaders draw upon pattern recognition, strategic foresight, and institutional memory rather than attempting to reconstruct knowledge from scratch in each scenario.
A blank slate approach to organisational management disregards the value of experience, intuition, and historical precedent—key elements in navigating governance, strategy, and culture. While often framed as fostering innovation, it instead conflates ignorance with insight, disrupts knowledge structures, and fosters a blame culture that undermines morale. Effective leadership requires structured cognition, expertise, and organisational wisdom to drive informed decision-making. Rather than challenging everything indiscriminately, organisations should appoint competent, sensitive leaders who ask meaningful questions, remove barriers, and create an environment where inquiry and expertise productively coexist.
Good night, and good luck.
