I was conducting focus groups with doctors, and without giving too much away, at one point we were talking about the effects of certain nutrients on a chronic disease. Two participants got into a heated disagreement about what is known about this topic. Here’s a somewhat edited version of their exchange:

Doctor 1: The data we have says …“blah, blah, blah.”

Doctor 2: Yes, but that data is from retrospective, observational studies and is of very poor quality, so you can’t draw conclusions from it.

Doctor 1: Retrospective data is 90% of what we have. If we throw that out, we’re left with almost nothing.

Doctor 2: If that’s the case, we should be honest about what we actually know. If we don’t know much for sure, patients should realize that.

Doctor 1: That’s not realistic. Patients and doctors need definitive answers.

Doctor 2: I’d rather tell a patient I don’t know then make a recommendation based on nothing.

What these doctors were really arguing about was this – what’s worse, a bad answer or no answer?

When no answers are available, bad answers are seductive. Not having an answer is uncomfortable. When I worked in CPG marketing, it was genuinely unacceptable. Admitting not having an answer to a question about your brand could damage how you were perceived by management. As a result, I saw some disastrous decisions regarding new product launches and brand communication made based on bad answers.

When you acknowledge not knowing, you give yourself a gift: the opportunity to keep learning. When you settle for a bad answer, you’re cheating yourself of the opportunity to discover new knowledge. That’s one reason qualitative researchers ask open-ended questions. Closed ended questions are built around assumed knowledge – things we believe we know; open ends assume little or nothing, which requires admitting you don’t know.

So, to give ourselves the opportunity to discover new insights, we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. We must be willing to say we don’t know yet. That word – ‘yet’ – is important. It communicates that the process of inquiry is ongoing, and that acknowledging not knowing now eventually leads to better understanding.

This principle goes beyond market research. I wish public officials would be more willing to admit ignorance, rather than feigning knowledge. Perhaps, someday, that will become politically feasible. So, don’t settle for a bad answer just because you don’t have a good one. Admit that you don’t know  – yet – and continue to strive for understanding.

If you know me, you know that I teach martial arts – and you probably know this because I talk about it all the time. I’ve gained a lot from teaching, and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that, if you want to learn something well, teach it to somebody else. Not only has being a teacher made me a more adept martial arts practitioner, but encouraging students to teach a newly acquired skill or principle to somebody else – another student, a friend or a family member – as soon as possible has become one of my primary instructional techniques.

This concept can be applied to nearly all areas of endeavor, including qualitative research. A great way to help research participants crystalize and refine their own thinking is to ask them to explain their point of view to another participant. And, if you want to be a better researcher, find opportunities to educate others in the profession. That’s one of the reasons I write this blog: my own professional development. Hopefully, if you’ve been reading it regularly over the past three years, you’ve learned a thing or two, and that’s certainly been one of my goals. But I can assure you that nobody has learned more from this newsletter than I have. Similarly, I speak regularly at market research industry conferences and events. This forces me to acquire new knowledge or deepen my understanding of what I already know.

The reason this principle – learning by teaching – works so well is that most skills are self-taught, particularly advanced ones. Like many advanced skills, qualitative research is as much art as it is science. You need a solid grounding in fundamentals, basic facts and principles. However, when it comes to actually doing the thing, it just takes a lot of hard work, failure, and repetition before you become proficient. And this whole process will be improved and sped up if you make a point of finding opportunities to teach what you’re learning.

So, think about your own life. There must be things – personal or professional – at which you want to improve or that you want to know more about. Put this principle to work for yourself – find a way to teach those things to others. If nothing else, this is an opportunity to exploit the people who love you. Turn them into your students, whether they like it or not. My long-suffering wife would probably tell you that she has been on the receiving end of this sort of thing far too many times,  but somehow, she still tolerates me.

One reason there’s so much social and political dysfunction in our world these days is that we don’t take the time – or make the effort – to understand each other.  Case in point, I once witnessed this exchange between two focus group participants. The category: personal wealth management.

Participant 1:  “I love index funds. They make things so easy. I don’t have to pay attention to them, and they perform well.”

Participant 2:  “That’s irresponsible. We should personally take charge of our own money.”

Participant 1:  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re retired and don’t have kids. I’m a single parent working full-time with three kids. My children need as much attention as I can give them—they’re my first priority.”

Participant 2: “Fine. But, thirty years from now, when you can’t afford to retire, you’ll realize the mistake you’ve made.”

I’ll spare you the rest, but things got pretty heated with neither party able to understand – to empathize – with the others point of view.

What do we make of this dialogue? More to the point, can we analyze this exchange to identify the source of disagreement and understand the inability to see another point of view?  Fortunately, there’s a set of tools that will enable that analysis: mindset models.

If you’re trying to figure out why people can’t understand each other, there’s no more valuable tool than mindsets. I’ve compiled dozens of mindsets that I’ve come across throughout my years as a researcher so I could quickly identify the ones driving this breakdown in empathy.

Participant 1 was looking through two mindset lenses: nurturance and efficiency. His highest value was that of caring for his children; secondarily, this was an overtaxed guy trying to get the most out of his time.

Participant 2 came at this conversation from different mindsets. She was focused on self-reliance – we must take responsibility for our obligations – and seemed driven by the idea that there is moral value in hard work – that outsourcing tasks is immoral.

So, here’s a crucial principle: when you encounter attitudes and behaviors that don’t make sense to you, realize that you haven’t identified the controlling mindset. It’s easy to say, “that person’s crazy,” “he’s evil,” or, “that guy’s an idiot.” But, In doing so, you’re missing an opportunity to see things from another point of view.

Mindsets give insight into the feelings of others. In a world where empathy seems to be in short supply, having a set of tools that can help you understand others is of tremendous value.

Last year I was interviewing healthcare professionals about how they use a specific medical device. Each doctor I spoke to said firmly that there was one proper way to use this device, although each one’s approach was somewhat different from that of the others. The nurses had a different point of view. While each had his or her own approach, they all acknowledged that there are a variety of ways to use this device, and the approach for a specific situation might vary based on several factors, including personal preference. When I told the nurses about the doctors’ POV that there’s only one right way, they all laughed and said something like, ‘yeah, that’s doctors.’

It’s common for people to develop rigid attitudes about things. So common that there’s a name for it: ‘orthodoxy.’ ‘Dogma’ is also a good description.

I’ve written  about how difficult it’s become to have conversations about sensitive topics – introducing the idea of ‘hyper-morality’ to explain why this is happening. But there’s another force at play: an increase in orthodox mindsets. Orthodoxy – the idea that there is only one correct way to do or think about something – has a way of shutting down conversation. I see this across the social and political spectrum.

Orthodoxy can be seductive, and none of us are immune to its charms. Establishing dogma can be an effective way of gaining the upper hand in a conversation or relationship. Orthodoxy can engender group cohesion – if everybody’s willing to buy in – and can also lead to efficiency and predictability. That’s the reason so many organizations, particularly large ones, can be so rigid. Having one way to do or think about something certainly simplifies things.

But there’s a dark side to orthodoxy. For one thing, it can stifle creativity and personal expression. And, in social settings—not to mention focus groups – it can be pretty toxic. When people put forth a point of view as being the only correct one, others can react badly if they are not willing to subordinate their opinions to the orthodoxy being presented. They might shut down or they might become belligerent – neither of which is a good thing.

It’s important to remember that orthodoxy is a mindset. As with all mindsets, we are free to adopt or reject it as we wish. In an age when I hope we’re all looking for ways to get along better, being on the lookout for orthodoxy in our own thinking can pave the way for friendlier, more productive conversations.