“What’s the dumbest question I could ask right now?” Then ask it. It usually isn’t dumb at all.

Asking yourself for the most basic question available is a way of getting underneath whatever the room has quietly agreed to skip. Those questions sound stupid because they are about the assumptions, and assumptions are exactly where confusion collects. More often than not, half the people present wanted the same thing explained and none of them wanted to be the one who said so.

Try it in your next class or shift: find the most obvious question there is and ask it before you talk yourself out of it. Keep track of how often it actually turns out to be dumb.