CEOs are becoming Chief Question Officers and HR has to redesign leadership for that
Summary
Leadership is shifting from having answers to framing the right questions. The article argues that AI hasn’t created uncertainty so much as revealed how much leadership relied on ambiguity — and that ambiguity now scales. In an AI-enabled organisation, leaders’ repeated questions become the operating instructions: they determine what is optimised, ignored or treated as acceptable loss. That makes question quality the new source of cost and risk.
The piece defines a modern leadership role as the Chief Question Officer: someone who focuses on diagnostic, tradeoff and consequence questions. It warns of “decision laundering” — when unclear questions produce confident-looking AI outputs that hide assumptions and remove accountability. The author says HR must redesign leadership development and reward systems to favour clarity, accountability and consequence thinking rather than theatrical confidence and speed.
Key Points
- AI amplifies ambiguity: vague leadership questions generate confident but flawed outputs that become policy and work.
- CEOs are evolving into Chief Question Officers — leaders who frame the organisation by the questions they repeat.
- Three essential question types: diagnostic (what is actually happening), tradeoff (what are we optimising and what will we sacrifice) and consequence (what behaviours and adaptations will follow).
- Decision laundering occurs when responsibility is pushed into models and dashboards, eroding ownership and trust.
- Existing leadership development trains certainty and theatrical decisiveness, not structured decision-making and explicit tradeoffs.
- HR must redesign rewards and promotion criteria to favour clarity, consequence thinking and accountable decision authorship.
- Younger workers expect visibility and legibility; opaque decisions feel dishonest and accelerate trust erosion.
- Organisations that adopt question-led leadership will feel more coherent and gain a competitive advantage, not necessarily more futuristic.
Context and Relevance
This piece is timely for HR leaders, executives and people teams grappling with AI adoption. As organisations scale AI-driven processes, the risk shifts from technical failure to governance and leadership design failures. The article links to broader trends in digital trust, talent systems and governance: if incentives remain misaligned, AI will scale poor decisions. HR’s role is central because power in organisations flows from who defines decision processes and who is made accountable.
Author style
Punchy — the author calls out what’s broken and points to a clear behavioural fix: teach leaders to craft and own the right questions, and change who gets rewarded.
Why should I read this
Short answer: because this tells you where things actually break when you put AI into work — it isn’t the models, it’s leadership design. If you care about trust, accountability and getting useful outcomes from AI, this is a quick, practical read that shows what to change in HR and promotion criteria rather than another tech checklist.