What a mess Messi!

Call it soccer or football; it is the greatest sport in the world. I am a die-hard Brazil fan, but I still love Lionel Messi. I am so sorry and find it hard to believe he was found guilty of tax fraud. Messi denied having any knowledge of his financial and tax affairs. However, the court dismissed his argument and held that indifference and ignorance do not clear Messi from his fiscal responsibility. Messi would appeal, and we would probably never know whether he was oblivious to the way his money was handled by his financial advisors, but it really doesn’t matter. He chose to be ignorant when he should have been interested and involved.

It reminds me of an old joke my kids used to tell me (right after the “knock knock” phase): “What’s the difference between ignorance and indifference?” Answer, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Well, sometimes it’s critical that we care and keep in the know. This is an important life lesson that can be applied to both our personal and professional life.  Deliberately keeping uninformed when the information is within reach can hurt us. Yes, there are situations where ignorance is bliss. However, there’s an important difference between rational ignorance and deliberate ignorance. Rational ignorance is a conscious decision to not pay attention to information that would yield little to no benefit, such as the happenings of the Kardashians. Deliberate ignorance, on the other hand, is equivalent to burying one’s head in the sand; choosing to ignore critical facts and exercise due diligence.

Classic examples of deliberate ignorance are bankers charged with laundering money who claim they never knew it was drug money, or top management in whistle-blowing cases being asked not only about what they knew but about what they could and should have known to avoid wrongdoing on their watch.

Whether in our personal life or at work we have a responsibility to be well-informed, which seems easy to do when we have unlimited knowledge at our fingertips. We can look up any topic and get instant answers. Who hasn’t self-diagnosed consulting Dr. Google? However, the answers we get are only as valuable as the questions we ask.

“The most common source of management mistakes is not the failure to find the right answers. It is the failure to ask the right questions… Nothing is more dangerous in business than the right answer to the wrong question” ~ Peter Drucker

Asking questions is the most powerful tool leaders and coaches possess. Asking the right question at the right moment may inspire deep insights and open up a whole new world. Yes, I am a coach and my superpower is changing lives one question at a time.

More on asking questions in my next post.