In my experience coaching and training hundreds of leaders, one challenge shows up more consistently than almost any other: Leaders either hesitate to speak up or they challenge forcefully in ways that damage relationships and credibility.
Both approaches create problems. One leads to missed risks and quiet frustration, while the other leads to leaders coming across as difficult, combative, or not being viewed as a team player.
But there is a third path, which is not about choosing comfort over courage or candor over collaboration. It is about mastering one core skill: Challenging with curiosity. This is how leaders hold people accountable without blame, without inviting defensiveness or unnecessary conflict.
See also: This HR Rising Star’s key to innovation? Curiosity
Why challenging with curiosity is critical for HR leaders in the AI era
This skill is especially important for HR leaders today.
As organizations deploy AI systems that influence hiring, performance evaluation, workforce monitoring and decision-making, HR leaders must challenge IT and product teams on bias, ethics and human impact as they sit at the intersection of people and technology. Silence creates risk where IT teams might optimize for performance, compromising human elements. Aggression shuts down dialogue.
Challenging with curiosity allows HR leaders to surface assumptions, uncover blind spots and guide teams toward better outcomes without assigning blame.
Example 1: The HR leader who did not challenge enough
A HR leader regularly attends product discussions about an AI-driven hiring tool. She notices potential bias risks but chooses not to bring them up, as she fears slowing progress or appearing uninformed.
Months later, external scrutiny exposes the very issues she had noticed early on. Her credibility suffers, not because she caused the problem, but because she did not challenge when she had the chance.
Avoiding challenge felt polite in the moment, but in reality, it removed her ability to influence the outcome.
Example 2: The HR leader who challenged too hard
Another HR leader took the opposite approach. She openly criticized the IT team’s decisions and framed concerns as failures rather than questions. While her points were valid, her approach created tension.
Over time, she stopped being included in early conversations. Decisions moved forward without HR input. Her influence faded, not because she lacked insight, but because her challenges felt threatening rather than collaborative.
The middle path: Challenging with curiosity
Challenging with curiosity is the skill that sits between silence and force.
It allows leaders to surface concerns without blame, to hold others accountable without accusation and to influence outcomes without creating resistance. Instead of stating conclusions, leaders ask questions that invite reflection.
Challenging with curiosity means:
- Slowing down certainty
- Replacing our assumptions with questions
- Helping others examine their own reasoning
Accountability still exists. What changes is the delivery. The focus shifts from being right to getting it right.
What challenging with curiosity sounds like in practice
A HR leader is reviewing test results from a new AI-powered hiring tool. While the model meets overall accuracy targets, she notices that candidates from certain demographic groups are advancing at lower rates. Instead of declaring the model biased, she chooses to challenge with curiosity.
HR leader: “I was looking at the test results and noticed differences in pass-through rates across candidate groups. How did we evaluate those differences?”
IT leader: “We focused mostly on overall accuracy. The model is performing well against our benchmarks.”
HR leader: “I’m curious. If accuracy looks strong overall, but some groups advance at much lower rates, what might that tell us?”
IT leader: “It could mean we are unintentionally reinforcing bias. We should probably run deeper bias validations in the input data before deploying this. Thank you for pointing that out.”
The HR leader never accused the model or the team. By using focused, curiosity-driven questions, she didn’t trigger defensiveness and instead empowered the IT leader to address the real challenge.
Why this approach works
The real purpose behind challenging with curiosity is not to manipulate others into reaching a conclusion you already believe is right; the purpose is to uncover hidden assumptions.
As tech executive Nisha Paliwal explains, “By using the curiosity-based approach, two things happen. Either the other person discovers something they were missing, or I discover something I was missing.”
That distinction matters. This approach is not about control or persuasion. It is about shared discovery. Sometimes, the other person sees a blind spot. Other times, you realize your own assumption was incomplete. In both cases, the outcome is better thinking, stronger decisions and accountability that people genuinely own.
Revisiting the two leaders through the lens of curiosity
When the previously silent HR leader learns to challenge with curiosity, concerns surface earlier. Trust increases. Risks decrease.
When the overly forceful HR leader replaces statements with questions, conversations become more collaborative. Defensiveness fades. Influence returns.
In my experience coaching similar leaders, I have seen that once they master challenging with curiosity, accountability transforms from something people resist into something they want to participate in.
Challenging with curiosity is the leadership skill of this era
Leadership is not about choosing between being agreeable or being confrontational. It is about being effective.
Challenging with curiosity allows leaders, especially HR leaders, to influence outcomes, protect people and guide ethical decision-making without blame or unnecessary friction. In an AI-driven world, this is not a soft skill. It is a foundational leadership capability.
Leaders who master challenging with curiosity will not only speak up more often, they will be heard, trusted and invited into the conversations where it matters most.
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