If you do it right, being willing to ask questions of those higher up, like said CEO, is how you get noticed, on their radar, as someone potentially worth watching and investing in and promoting in the future. A secure CEO in a healthy culture is likely to take it as a good sign that employees are aware, intelligent, and paying attention enough to ask clear, well-formed questions.
But if you ask a question in a way that offends that particular individual in whatever way, or makes your direct boss look bad to his direct boss (in either of their perceptions), then that can lead to any of those individuals retaliating in various ways, if their personality or position in the hierarchy makes them feel insecure or like that would make them look or feel better. Asking makes you and them socially vulnerable, and being willing to do so shows you’re secure in your understanding of how people will react as well as in your own position/role/status.
Since this was a Zoom meeting, the fact that you asked verbally is also in some sense a status claim, that you felt empowered to ask a question in a way that commanded everyone’s attention and interrupted the CEO’s talk track. It’s a power move, or can be seen as such. If you’d written in a public chat channel, you’d have left it up to others when and how to respond. If you’d back-channel messaged someone higher up in your organization, you’d have given them the option to either ignore it, message you back, or ask the question in the style and at the moment they deemed most appropriate.
Or, and this is what I think happened at the math conference example, if your question is insufficiently well-formed, then a large public meeting is the wrong forum in which to ask it, because the answer may (in the opinion of those better informed) be a waste of everyone’s time. Now of course a great speaker will try to hear that kind of question, figure out the source of the confusion, consider whether similar confusions are likely to be prominent among the audience, and either address that source, or gently let you know there are other factors you’re missing that sidestep the question, or else point you in the direction of the info that will resolve your confusion (aka “Come ask me after, and I’ll list some papers and textbooks you might want to check out on that.”) But a less comfortable and capable speaker won’t know to or know how to do that, and might shut you down, or get flustered.
Two other examples:
Some forums have a cultural expectation that the option to ask questions is in some sense not real, or not intended to be used, even when it looks like it should be. A colleague of mine was once asked to be on an expert panel in Korea, and asked a fellow panelist a detailed question; he was later told that was a major faux pas, because panels in that context are scripted and no one asks real questions in real time. He got a pass because he was an American and no one had thought to tell him that expectation, but it did interfere with his ability to network at that event and he didn’t get invited back.
In a small upper-level college or grad school class, you’re supposed to ask detailed questions. If you don’t, or can’t, you’re probably not paying enough attention. But in an intro class of 800 students in a big lecture hall, the lecturer is often going to be pressed for time, and they’d never get through everything if students all felt free to raise questions; the proper time to do that is in office hours or a recitation with the professor or a TA. If the question is important or a lot of people ask something similar, it’s their job to filter it up to mention in a future lecture.
If you do it right, being willing to ask questions of those higher up, like said CEO, is how you get noticed, on their radar, as someone potentially worth watching and investing in and promoting in the future. A secure CEO in a healthy culture is likely to take it as a good sign that employees are aware, intelligent, and paying attention enough to ask clear, well-formed questions.
But if you ask a question in a way that offends that particular individual in whatever way, or makes your direct boss look bad to his direct boss (in either of their perceptions), then that can lead to any of those individuals retaliating in various ways, if their personality or position in the hierarchy makes them feel insecure or like that would make them look or feel better. Asking makes you and them socially vulnerable, and being willing to do so shows you’re secure in your understanding of how people will react as well as in your own position/role/status.
Since this was a Zoom meeting, the fact that you asked verbally is also in some sense a status claim, that you felt empowered to ask a question in a way that commanded everyone’s attention and interrupted the CEO’s talk track. It’s a power move, or can be seen as such. If you’d written in a public chat channel, you’d have left it up to others when and how to respond. If you’d back-channel messaged someone higher up in your organization, you’d have given them the option to either ignore it, message you back, or ask the question in the style and at the moment they deemed most appropriate.
Or, and this is what I think happened at the math conference example, if your question is insufficiently well-formed, then a large public meeting is the wrong forum in which to ask it, because the answer may (in the opinion of those better informed) be a waste of everyone’s time. Now of course a great speaker will try to hear that kind of question, figure out the source of the confusion, consider whether similar confusions are likely to be prominent among the audience, and either address that source, or gently let you know there are other factors you’re missing that sidestep the question, or else point you in the direction of the info that will resolve your confusion (aka “Come ask me after, and I’ll list some papers and textbooks you might want to check out on that.”) But a less comfortable and capable speaker won’t know to or know how to do that, and might shut you down, or get flustered.
Two other examples:
Some forums have a cultural expectation that the option to ask questions is in some sense not real, or not intended to be used, even when it looks like it should be. A colleague of mine was once asked to be on an expert panel in Korea, and asked a fellow panelist a detailed question; he was later told that was a major faux pas, because panels in that context are scripted and no one asks real questions in real time. He got a pass because he was an American and no one had thought to tell him that expectation, but it did interfere with his ability to network at that event and he didn’t get invited back.
In a small upper-level college or grad school class, you’re supposed to ask detailed questions. If you don’t, or can’t, you’re probably not paying enough attention. But in an intro class of 800 students in a big lecture hall, the lecturer is often going to be pressed for time, and they’d never get through everything if students all felt free to raise questions; the proper time to do that is in office hours or a recitation with the professor or a TA. If the question is important or a lot of people ask something similar, it’s their job to filter it up to mention in a future lecture.
Thanks, “hire”-->”higher” typo fixed.