The Questions We Ask, And The Questions We Don’t

Our lives, and indeed our businesses, are shaped by the questions we ask, and the questions we don’t.  

What do you want? 

This question changed my life, and work. 

As my time in Cambodia came to an end, I was ready to do more. I’d spend an hour a day doing something to help these survivors, and I’d find others to help too. But I hadn’t lived their lives; I didn’t know what they wanted or needed. I had thoughts and ideas, but what did they want? 

It’s possible that somebody else might not have asked this question that day. 

Somehow I expected they’d say something easy, something that’d take only an hour a day to come good on.

They wanted to end sex trafficking. This was big. 

They explained that when girls are rescued from brothels, the traffickers don’t give up - they just go out into the rural villages and take new girls. They wanted these girls protected. Because they were sitting here safe, another young girl was being forced to endure the rape and torture they had just been rescued from. It was a revolving door!  

‘Nicky, go out into the villages, find the girls who aren’t in school before the traffickers do, and get them into school,’ they told me.

It dawned on me that they had not had professionals looking out for them. Not one of these girls had been in school when they were trafficked. They believed that if they were in school, they wouldn’t have been trafficked. If they were in school they would have been safe!

I’d had no idea that they would hand me a mission of such epic proportions, a mission I had no idea how to achieve.  

But I'd asked the question, and they had answered. 

And the course of my life changed in an instant.

As much as this example is about the importance of preventing abuse, I believe it can be applied to anything. 

What questions do you want to ask, both in your life and in your work? 

When I moved to Australia, I did short teaching contracts and relief teaching in a number of schools and, with the exception of only two schools, I wouldn’t have sent my own children to any of them. I was passionate about educating children but the system was broken. 

So when I realised I was going to be spending my time preventing sex trafficking I was very aware of the importance of building systems carefully. I decided to focus my efforts on creating a system to prevent sex trafficking, and tread very carefully, so that that system didn’t become broken. It’s easier to set up systems in your business or organisation that work well, than try to fix broken systems later.