When someone else does something that puzzles me, I am often tempted to ask ‘Why?’ – and I always get an answer that justifies the original act.

Whenever you ask someone ‘why’ they did something, you are inviting them to justify their actions and, in their mind, this actually reinforces the behaviour. The question somehow invokes defensive routines in the respondent’s mind.

Rather than ask why someone did something there are more helpful questions you can pose. Ask them what they were trying to achieve, or how what they did helped them. These are quite different questions and far more useful because they activate a different part of the brain to ‘Why?’. You might get an answer that helps you understand how the original action was a good idea, or you might get a better understanding of the rationale for the action and so be able to formulate a different action that would get the result you both want.

On the other hand, it is good to ask why someone did something that turned out well, as this will reinforce the desired behaviour.

“Why do you read these blog articles?” 🙂