Curiosity is a word frequently associated with childhood or domestic pets. When a child is experiencing the world around them for the first time and interacting with their new surroundings, we say they are curious. In the context of pets, curiosity is known to have killed the cat.
This post asserts that curiosity is more than just childlike wonder or a danger for the domestic feline, it is a key skill for business professionals. Indeed, this view is echoed in countless business headlines. For example, LinkedIn’s Talent Blog has published an article titled “Why Curiosity Might be the Most Important Skill for Recruiters”, and Forbes has published an article on “Curiosity: A Leadership Trait That Can Transform Your Business To Achieve Extraordinary Results”.
Curiosity, at a basic level, is the desire to learn more about something. In the context of consulting, and the professional world more widely, we are talking about ‘intellectual curiosity’, the kind that leads a professional to seek out and acquire new knowledge, understanding, and insights that might be employed for the benefit of a client to solve a challenging problem or improve the way things are done.
Since there is always more to know if you want to be good at your job and remain at the top of your field, curiosity is mandatory regardless of your chosen profession. Indeed, it is impossible to function effectively on a day-to-day basis without being curious. Since the world is constantly changing, we are all required to learn how to do new things, whether it be using a new website, following a new style guide, paying bills using a new app, or figuring out how to travel somewhere you have never been before. Intellectual curiosity, however, goes further than this basic level since it can lead you to question unstated assumptions, and acquire knowledge that isn’t strictly necessary for the job at hand.
In this respect, intellectual curiosity is all about breaking free from the constraints of textbook knowledge, agreed orthodoxy, and accepted standards in order to chart new paths. It’s about finding new ways of doing things, even when the old ways aren’t noticeably dysfunctional. It’s about finding a better solution to a business problem, even when the client thought they were satisfied or the existing solution seemed to work fairly well. Intellectual curiosity is all about the desire to take things further for the sake of personal interest, betterment, and progress, and a willingness to rise to the challenge.
For these reasons, intellectual curiosity is key to consulting success. A consultant without intellectual curiosity may perform reliably by following established frameworks to deliver cookie-cutter solutions. While the consultant may not underperform, they will rarely surpass expectations either. The intellectually curious consultant, on the other hand, can perform as required by following established methods, but also has the potential to take their work further. By adapting old methods and improving existing frameworks, they have the ability to generate progress and growth where things had previously been stagnant and unchanging. The desire to constantly know more and do better, can quickly set a young professional apart from every other budding consultant in the industry. As New York based consultant Alan Weiss once said, “if you improve by 1% per day, in 70 days you’re twice as good”. Or to put it another way, being curious is transformative, it’s the difference between being ordinary and becoming extra-ordinary.
Management consulting offers graduates the opportunity to pursue a dynamic career in an ever-evolving industry. To succeed in such an environment, it is not sufficient to blindly accept standard practice without any desire to know and learn more. Rather, young professionals must be willing to ask questions, and to be the ones to drive change and progress in the industry. In a business environment that is constantly changing, to thrive means to be transformative, a quality that stems from persistent curiosity.
Sukhi R. is a graduate from Warwick Law School currently studying an MSc in Business with Consulting at Warwick Business School. She has a keen interest in the business psychology of consulting and plans to enter the industry in the near future.
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