"I Have No Answers, Only Questions"? That's Not Leadership.

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly – a risk I take twice every week here at Vision & Balance – I want to warn all of us away from a common abdication of responsibility that masquerades as intellectual humility among leaders: the tired formulation "I have no answers, only questions." Every time I hear or read it, you can hear me muttering to himself like an old man with neighborhood kids on his lawn.

Let me start out, though, by acknowledging some obvious and important truths:

• No leader (or follower, or anyone else) has all the answers.
• No one should be embarrassed about not having answers, at least at the beginning of a problem-solving process.
• Questions are incredibly important, and it's usually essential to start with questions.
• Some questions have no answers, or at least no single universally correct answer.

Having acknowledged these important points, why am I then criticizing the position "I have no answers, only questions"?