If she asks her report how things are going and the answer for multiple weeks is “Everything is fine,” she takes it as a sign to prod further. It’s much more likely that the report is shy about getting into the gory details than that everything is consistently rainbows and butterflies.

Questions like “What problems does it have?” do exactly that. Rather than implicitly assuming no issues, they assume there are some and want to root them out.

Indeed, when a third set of potential buyers asked “What problems does it have?,” potential sellers were much more forthcoming. Even though positive and negative assumption questions both directly asked about problems, negative assumption questions led sellers to be 50 percent more likely to fess up that problems could exist.

Questions not only solicit information, they reveal it. They reveal information about our knowledge, our assumptions, and even how assertive we’re going to be.

It turns out that these differences in certainty have an important impact on sustained attention. Looking across thousands of pieces of content, we found that uncertain emotions encouraged engagement…

Uncertainty led readers to stick around to resolve what they didn’t know.

Now that John and Ed were in place, that problem was well on its way to being solved. Once Disney Animation was solid, I was open to other acquisitions, even if they weren’t obviously “Disney.” In fact, I was much more conscious of not wanting to play it safe.