- Mar 27, 2016
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That wouldn’t be a dumb question. That would be an intelligent question.
Using your runway example (Seabees don’t do pontoon bridging - confusing us with ESB), a dumb question would be me asking my guys what minimum time would be required to successfully complete an assigned runway repair if we ignored whatever critical vulnerabilities we couldn’t overcome with current manning, training, or equipment knowing that I would have to brief that time to higher as a baseline. See the difference?
There really is no difference between your two questions IF the questioner does not know. In fact both of your questions are quite legit depending on the situation. In training where one does not have a complete problem one may well ask what you consider a dumb question. In training one might only ask parts of the second question to see what the trainees know.
In the field one who does not yet fully understand the the full nature of the problem, your dumb question is not dumb either. Even to you the question you consider incomplete is not dumb is your commanding officer want to make sure you on your game and considering all aspects without him prompting you.
So again no question is dumb, at least no sincere question is. In the particular case, I did not know what the complainers about the roster considered the problems, so I asked. That was not a dumb question. That was and is a question to flesh out what various people here think about the roster.
The not considering the QB aspect of it was to focus the issue. It was my view maybe that everyone broadly speaking thinks QB is a problem. The way to identify views of other weaknesses was to concede the QB issue up front and ask people not to list that as a weakness. There were at the time scores of thread discussing the QB roster issues. I did not want to start that thread again, I wanted to hear about other concerns people had.
Just as if I wanted to see if a seabee knew what the runway should take and not get a complaint-fest about how under manned the unit is. Questions have different goals.