Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How a Career Curiosity Audit Can Unlock Hidden Growth
Transcript
- Lucas: If we've helped you think through a career move or decision, we're glad. This show has always been ad-free by choice — no sponsorships, no commercials — and that's something we want to keep. Luna: Yeah, we've never run ads, and we hear from listeners that they appreciate not having their listening interrupted by a mattress or meal kit pitch. Lucas: If that ad-free approach matters to you, the best way to keep it that way is a small contribution at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just option. Luna: All right. So today, we're talking about curiosity — specifically, why most professionals are not curious enough about the right things. Lucas: Right. You'd think curiosity is just a personality trait, something you either have or you don't. But I've been reading research from Francesca Gino at Harvard — she found that curiosity at work leads to fewer decision errors, more innovation, and even lower turnover. The thing is, most people don't deliberately cultivate it. Luna: So how do you cultivate it deliberately? I mean, you can't just schedule 'be curious' for Tuesday at 3 p.m. Lucas: No, but you can run a Career Curiosity Audit. A structured two-week exercise where you log every question that pops into your head during work — and then categorize them. I've been prototyping this with a few coaching clients and the results are eye-opening. Luna: Define 'category.' What kind of questions are we grouping? Lucas: Four buckets. First, 'known interests' — questions about things you already like. Second, 'dormant curiosities' — questions you once had but shelved. Third, 'active gaps' — questions you know you should ask but haven't. Fourth, 'blind spots' — questions it never occurred to you to even ask. Luna: And you actually have clients keep a log? Like the old 'happiness journal' but for questions? Lucas: Exactly. They set a timer twice a day — mid-morning and mid-afternoon — and write down any work-related question that crossed their mind. Not answers, just the question. After two weeks, we map them into the four boxes. One client — a marketing manager at a mid-size software company — she found that 80 percent of her questions started with 'how.' Luna: How to execute, how to implement, how to fix? That's execution mode. Lucas: Exactly. She was a master executor, but she almost never asked 'why' — why is this process the way it is? Why do customers churn after six months? Her curiosity was narrow. And she felt stuck because she was always in 'do' mode, never in 'understand' mode. Luna: So the audit revealed that her dormant curiosity bucket was full of questions about product strategy. She used to ask those early in her career, then stopped because she felt they weren't 'her job.' Lucas: Bingo. She started spending one hour a week — just one hour — reading product roadmaps and customer interviews. Within three months, she had volunteered for a cross-functional project on retention. That project got her promoted to group product manager a year later. Luna: I love that because it's not about being more curious generally. It's about being curious in the direction that actually matters for your growth. Lucas: Right. The Career Curiosity Audit is essentially a targeted expansion of your 'question library.' Most people's libraries are tiny — they recycle the same ten questions every day. The audit forces you to inventory what you're not asking. Luna: Let's talk about blind spots. How do you surface a question you don't know you're missing? Lucas: That's the trickiest bucket. I ask clients to look at three sources: job postings for roles they want, recent industry reports, and their calendar. If you never see a question in your log about, say, your company's revenue model or competitor moves, that's a blind spot. One client in HR realized she never asked about how her team's work tied to revenue. That's a huge blind spot for someone wanting to move into HR business partnering. Luna: And once you've identified a blind spot, the next step is just asking someone, right? Lucas: Yes. But more systematically: set up a 15-minute conversation with a colleague from a department you don't interact with. Come with three questions you've never asked before. That's the curiosity workout. Luna: I wonder if there's a risk of overwhelming people. If I log 200 questions, I might feel like I'm too scattered. Lucas: That's why the categorization helps. You see patterns. Most people have a dominant bucket — maybe they're heavy on known interests and light on dormant curiosities. The goal isn't to ask everything; it's to notice which bucket is empty and intentionally fill it. Luna: So for the marketing manager, her dominant bucket was 'how' — execution. Her dormant bucket was strategy. She only needed to spend time on that one bucket to unlock growth. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to be specific: the audit doesn't have to be a huge time commitment. Ten minutes a day for two weeks. Then one hour to map and reflect. That's four hours total to potentially reshape your career trajectory. Luna: Four hours is less than one reality TV binge. So what about the log itself? Digital or analog? Lucas: I prefer analog — a small notebook — because it's less distracting. But a notes app works. The key is to capture the question immediately, not to answer it. Because the act of answering shuts down curiosity. You want to preserve the open question. Luna: That's a good nuance. Curiosity dies when you feel pressure to resolve it. Lucas: Another finding from Gino's research: curiosity at work is contagious. When you start asking 'why' out loud, your colleagues start asking it too. So the audit can actually shift team culture. Luna: Has anyone in your coaching practice had a negative result — like they discovered they're not genuinely curious about anything? Lucas: That happened with one guy in financial compliance. His log had almost no questions at all — maybe three over two weeks. He was doing the same checks every day, no variation. That's not a character flaw; it's a sign the role is too narrow. He ended up using the audit as evidence to negotiate for more exploratory project work. Luna: So even a low-curiosity outcome is actionable. It tells you something about the job design. Lucas: Precisely. If your audit shows you're not curious, the question becomes: is it you or your environment? Often it's the environment. Luna: Let's circle back to the framework. The four buckets — any advice on which to tackle first? Lucas: Start with dormant curiosities. Those are the easiest to re-engage because they already have emotional energy. Then active gaps — those are the most practical. Leave blind spots for last because they require external perspective, maybe a mentor or a conversation with someone outside your department. Luna: And known interests — presumably you already feed those. So the audit just confirms you're not ignoring them. Lucas: Right. But sometimes people over-invest in known interests to the exclusion of everything else. If your log is all about your favorite projects and nothing else, that's a signal you're comfortable but not growing. Luna: I'm thinking about my own work. I tend to ask a lot of 'what if' questions — speculative stuff. That used to feel unproductive, but now I realize it's a form of dormant curiosity that could be channeled. Lucas: Exactly. 'What if' questions are high-leverage. They often lead to innovation. The audit helps you see that your 'unproductive' questions might be your most valuable. Luna: So logging for two weeks, four buckets, one conversation a week — seems manageable. Where can listeners get a template? Lucas: I'll put a simple template in the show notes if you're listening on the website. But honestly, you don't need it — just a notebook and a willingness to capture questions without judging them. Luna: And if you do the audit and uncover something big — like you realize you want to change functions — what's the next step? Lucas: Then you use that insight as the basis for a career conversation. You take your curiosity log to your manager or mentor and say, 'I've been tracking the questions that energize me, and they point in a different direction. Can I explore this for 10 percent of my time?' Nine times out of ten, they'll say yes. Luna: That's a great close. I'm going to try the audit this week. See if I discover anything. Lucas: Let us know how it goes. I'm genuinely curious.