Not long ago, a friend told me she had been criticised at work for ‘asking too many questions'. The comment stayed with me. It wasn't the words themselves but the implication behind them – that curiosity is somehow inconvenient, or that challenge is something to manage rather than welcome.
In a sector as complex, pressured and scrutinised as local government, that mindset is not just unhelpful; it actively holds organisations back. The councils that innovate, collaborate and adapt best are those that create environments where people at every level feel able – and expected – to ask questions.
Curiosity is not a soft skill. It is a leadership discipline.
Questions as a leadership tool
The best leaders I work with, particularly in executive search and assessment, are defined less by what they know and more by the quality of the questions they ask. They probe, test assumptions, invite alternative perspectives and surface insights that others might miss.
Questions are how leaders diagnose organisational culture, understand political context and uncover what is really happening in a community. They allow complexity to be explored rather than ignored and they enable people to feel heard rather than managed.
In senior-level recruitment, some of the strongest candidates are the ones who don't rush to offer answers. Instead, they pause, think, and ask clarifying questions that reveal how they approach ambiguity. Their curiosity signals humility, intelligence and a willingness to learn – qualities that are essential in modern local government, where certainty is in short supply.
The danger of discouraging curiosity
Telling someone they ask too many questions is rarely about efficiency; it's usually about discomfort. Questions can feel challenging. They can expose gaps, highlight risk or slow down decisions. But suppressing questions has consequences:
• It narrows thinking and reinforces group-think.
• It deters people from surfacing problems until they are too big to fix quietly.
• It reduces psychological safety, especially for new joiners, younger staff or those from under-represented backgrounds.
• It sends an implicit message that compliance is valued more than insight.
For councils navigating rising demand, financial pressure and system complexity, silence is far riskier than curiosity.
Curiosity as organisational culture
Creating a culture of curiosity doesn't mean tolerating endless debate or slowing progress. It means building habits where people can inquire openly without defensiveness or hierarchy getting in the way.
Curious organisations do three things well:
1. They normalise questioning, from cabinet to front-line staff. Leaders visibly ask questions themselves, modelling that they don't have all the answers.
2. They reward learning rather than certainty. Mistakes are treated as data, not failures.
3. They build time and space for reflection, recognising that constant urgency erodes thinking quality.
In leadership assessments, I increasingly see councils looking for this mindset. Not technical omniscience, but intellectual openness. Not rigid confidence, but reflective confidence – the ability to say: ‘I don't know yet, but here's how I would find out.'
Why this matters for executive search
Recruiting senior leaders in local government is no longer about matching CVs to service silos. It's about understanding how a leader will engage with an uncertain environment, build trust with members and partners, and lead organisations through systemic change. Curiosity is a key predictor of success in all these areas.
A candidate who asks thoughtful questions early in the search process is signalling several things:
• How they think.
• What matters to them.
• Whether they grasp political nuance.
• Whether they will challenge constructively once in post.
As recruiters, we should pay attention to the questions candidates ask as closely as we listen to the answers they give.
Similarly, councils should be asking themselves ‘do our processes allow candidates to explore or do they unintentionally reward those who perform certainty well – even when certainty may be false?'
Assessment tasks that allow candidates to question assumptions, test scenarios or engage with stakeholders often give a far truer picture of leadership potential than a traditional competency interview alone.
Curiosity and the changing nature of public leadership
Local government leadership today is fundamentally a system role. It requires working across blurred boundaries, engaging with uncertainty and building shared outcomes with organisations you do not directly control.
In a system like this, leaders who stop asking questions stop learning – and leaders who stop learning quickly lose sight of the environment around them.
Curiosity helps leaders read the system they are part of, including:
• What's changing in the community?
• Where are the pressure points in staff morale?
• What is the narrative members are responding to?
• What assumptions are we making that no one has tested?
Questions illuminate blind spots. They create alignment. They generate better decisions.
Reclaiming the value of asking questions
If someone is told they ask too many questions, the problem isn't them – it's the culture around them. Local government needs more curiosity, not less. More challenge, not less. More leaders willing to say: ‘Help me understand what sits underneath this.'
The councils that will thrive in the next decade are those that make curiosity part of their identity. And the leaders who will shape the sector's future are the ones who keep asking the questions others overlook.
Ben Parsonage is a senior consultant in GatenbySanderson's local government practice
