When answers aren't enough

When answers aren't enough

Can you remember the last time you didn’t know something? And then how long was it before you did?

The name of a song. The actor in that movie. That Greek restaurant you visited last month.

I’ve noticed that around the dinner table there is often a moment when someone reaches for a phone. The facts are checked and an answer is found.

We have access to information all the time. On demand.

Even things we didn't know we needed.

Like what our pets would look like as a mariachi band, kitted out with sombreros and guitars.

Who knew?

Safe to say, we have more answers available to us than ever before.

AI has accelerated that dramatically. Aside from the trivia at the dinner table, ask a question, provide the right prompts and, within seconds, you can have an analysis, a recommendation, several alternatives and a list of things you may not have considered.

But I wonder if having all these answers now presents us with another problem.

Finding answers used to be the challenge.

You needed someone who knew. A book you could find. Experience you hadn’t yet acquired. Time to research, learn or work something out.

I still remember the Encyclopaedia Britannica!

Today, we swim in a sea of answers. Pet mariachi bands aside, several of them may even be perfectly reasonable.

So what do we do when finding an answer is no longer the difficult part?

Answers alone don’t solve the problem. We need to know what to do with them.

I see this in my work with leaders and leadership teams.

When a team is stuck on an important decision, it’s rarely through lack of information.

Usually, there are several options on the table, each with sound reasons for or against.

And there’s always a lot to weigh.

How will people be affected? Have we considered all the consequences? What are we missing? And what will it cost?

And then there is history, experience, differing values and priorities. There are things we know, things we don’t, and things we never will.

More analysis and more opinions will only take us so far.

Ultimately, we have to decide what matters.

That requires judgement. Perhaps wisdom begins there.

Experience and knowledge alone don’t necessarily make us wise.

We grow in wisdom by making sense of what we know and what we’ve experienced. We reflect on it. Invite others in to question our assumptions. Listen to perspectives other than our own.

Sometimes another person sees something we simply can’t see from where we’re standing.

And somehow, we have to bring all of that to bear on the decision in front of us.

So perhaps AI makes that need for wisdom even more apparent.

AI is not the problem.

But when we can so readily generate answers, it’s easy to confuse having answers with knowing what to do.

And maybe wisdom lies somewhere in the space between the two.

Paul

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This reflection was prompted in part by George Hallenbeck and David Altman’s “Lost in a Sea of Answers: The Case for Leadership Wisdom,” Center for Creative Leadership (2026)

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