Product teams are often taught to search for answers: the right feature, the right metric, the right roadmap, and the right release plan. But the best product decisions rarely begin with answers. They begin with questions, especially the kind that challenge assumptions, expose gaps, and force teams to look beyond what they already believe. In a field built on innovation, curiosity becomes the quiet engine that pushes ideas into new territory and keeps products aligned with real user needs rather than internal expectations.
This mindset is something that thoughtful product leaders, including David Ohnstad, consistently demonstrate: curiosity isn’t a soft skill or a personality trait; it’s a strategic tool. When used well, it sharpens judgment, strengthens collaboration, and prevents teams from building based on shortcuts or guesswork.
Why Curiosity Matters More Than Confidence in Product Work
Product decisions often live in environments filled with incomplete data, shifting user behaviour, and ambiguous business priorities. Confidence can make teams feel secure, but curiosity keeps them honest. Confidence tends to focus on confirming what we think we know. Curiosity asks, “What are we missing?”
Curiosity adds friction to assumptions, and that friction is healthy. It slows down premature certainty and opens space for deeper understanding.
- Why are users behaving differently than predicted?
- Why is the problem surfacing now?
- Why does the data contradict the narrative?
- Why do we believe this solution is the best one?
Curiosity Creates Better User Understanding
Products sometimes fail not because teams lacked skill, but because they lacked curiosity about their users. Curiosity forces teams to approach users with humility and patience. Instead of searching for validation, they search for truth.
This changes conversations dramatically.
- “What does the user really want?”
- “What job are they actually trying to get done?”
- “What problem frustrates them the most, and why?”
Without curiosity, teams risk building features for themselves, not their users. With curiosity, they uncover needs users may not even articulate clearly.
Curiosity Drives Cross-Functional Collaboration
In product work, no single function holds the complete story. Engineering understands constraints. Design understands behavior. Marketing understands positioning. Sales understands friction. Support understands real-world struggles. Data science understands patterns.
When teams ask better questions, “What are we seeing?” “What does this imply?” “What would change if we saw it differently?” collaboration becomes more analytical and less territorial. Curiosity encourages people to share what they know, admit what they don’t, and build better interpretations together.
It shifts the culture from “my viewpoint” to “our understanding.”
Curiosity Protects Products From Stagnation
Every product eventually reaches a point where incremental improvements feel safe and new ideas feel risky. Curiosity keeps products from drifting into routine. It encourages leaders and teams to revisit assumptions, rethink workflows, and explore how users, markets, and technologies are evolving.
Curiosity asks:
- “What has changed since we last looked at this?”
- “What emerging patterns could reshape our roadmap?”
- “What do new competitors see that we don’t?”
Products grow stale when teams stop asking these questions. They grow stronger when curiosity reopens the door to possibility.
How Leaders Can Build a Culture of Curiosity
Curiosity becomes powerful when it is shared, not just practiced individually. To make curiosity part of the culture, leaders can create conditions that reward inquiry rather than speed or certainty.
1. Prioritize discovery over deliverables.
If teams are judged only on output, curiosity dies fast. If they are judged on learning, curiosity thrives.
2. Ask questions in meetings instead of giving answers.
A simple shift “What do you think?” instead of “Here’s what we’ll do” changes the tone entirely.
3. Celebrate insights, not just milestones.
Finding a new user behaviour pattern can be as valuable as shipping a feature.
4. Encourage exploration outside of the product room.
Reading widely, observing markets, and experimenting with new tools all this feeds curiosity.
Curiosity Makes Product Work More Human
Beyond strategy, curiosity makes product work more grounded and more human. It fosters empathy, humility, and genuine interest in how people behave. It transforms work from mechanical output into thoughtful problem-solving. It creates space for better ideas, sharper insights, and more resilient decisions.
When curiosity is embedded into the product process, teams stop building features in isolation and start shaping solutions that matter. They listen more closely, explore more deeply, and commit more intelligently.
In a world where product teams face constant pressure to move fast, curiosity becomes the counterbalance that ensures they also move wisely. And that combination, paired with thoughtful exploration, is what makes great products stand out.