When people think about what makes a great Engineering Manager, they often list the usual suspects: technical expertise, leadership presence, organizational skills, and creating a strong foundation of trust and safety for their team.

But there’s one skill I’ve found quietly more powerful than all of them: curiosity.

Not curiosity in the “read an interesting article” sense, but the active, persistent curiosity that makes you pause in a meeting and ask:

“Why are we doing it this way?”
“Why does this matter to the customer?”
“Why now?”
“What is the real problem we are trying to solve?”

As Engineering Managers, there’s a temptation to prove we’re “right” and always have the answer, the plan, the fix. That’s often what we’re rewarded for earlier in our careers as engineers. But once you step into leadership, being right is rarely the thing that creates the most impact. Curiosity changes the game.

When you ask “why,” a few important things happen:

Uncover assumptions

Often, teams are building on an unspoken premise that’s outdated, incomplete, or never truly validated. A simple “why” can reveal that the real problem to solve is different from the one in the ticket or project plan. It can expose that the constraints everyone has been working within are self-imposed rather than real.

Just the process of having to verbalize the answer to “why” can surface misalignments between stakeholders, uncover missing context from the customer’s perspective, or highlight that the initial solution was optimized for a problem that no longer exists. These discoveries can save weeks or even months of effort.

Build trust

Genuine curiosity shows that you care more about understanding than about winning an argument or pushing your own idea. When your team sees that you are seeking to learn rather than to score points, it signals respect for their expertise and perspective. Over time, this builds psychological safety because people know you are there to explore possibilities with them, not to shoot down ideas. It also models healthy dialogue, encouraging others to ask their own “why” questions and engage more openly. Trust grows when people feel heard, and curiosity is one of the fastest ways to make that happen.

The best outcomes I’ve been part of as an Engineering Manager didn’t come from me being the most knowledgeable person in the room. They came from slowing down long enough to ask a question that reframed the problem and then letting the team run with it.

Being right feels good in the moment. However, being curious builds a culture where the right answers emerge naturally. If you want to level up as a leader, practice replacing statements with questions. You might be surprised at how quickly “Why?” becomes the most valuable tool in your kit.