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“I got this.”

This was my go-to line when I knew what I was doing and wanted to get my boss off my back. What I couldn’t see was how it highlighted a major mistake. I wasn’t evaluating the situation, I wasn’t asking questions. I assumed I knew all the answers, and I was usually wrong.

I didn’t realize the error in my ways until a major client rollout flopped and I had no one to blame but myself — my own stubborn belief that “I got this,” even though I clearly didn’t.

In a debrief with my boss, he said, “Aaron, when you say 'I got this' and have no concerns about a situation, that is when I get concerned.”

What he meant was that as soon as I stop asking compelling questions, I assume I know what’s going to work and stop evaluating potential outcomes and solutions. It’s a tendency we all have when we want to take the quick route. It’s what holds us back from being powerful leaders.

Why is asking powerful questions an essential leadership habit?

It provides leaders with a means to mitigate their confirmation biases and dive deep into the evaluation of a situation, a person or their team as a whole.

I had biases for how the rollout was going to play out. I’d done this before; I knew what was going to happen, so why should I look further into it? I wish I could say this was unique to me, but we all do this. Our brains are wired to jump to outcomes, to look for shortcuts.

Not sure if this relates to you? Watch this quick video to test yourself.

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist who was the first to highlight these biases, states, “Confirmation bias comes from when you have an interpretation, and you adopt it, and then, top down, you force everything to fit that interpretation.”

This bias can be disastrous for leaders; it can hinder their decision making ability and blindside them completely. Asking powerful questions is our way around it. It can help us avoid this common miscalculation.

What does a powerful question look like?

I’m going to share a definition of and the criteria for a powerful question, but I also want to be clear there is no script for asking a powerful question. Powerful questions evoke clarity, create greater possibility, reveal new learning and generate action. Here are a few ways to determine if a question is powerful or not.

A powerful question …

• Is open-ended: Ask what, when or how instead of asking a yes or no question.

• Comes from a beginner’s mindset: Start by telling yourself, “I don’t know the answer.”

• Is clear and succinct: Keep it simple, don’t use too many words.

• Is impactful: It’s important to remember that not every question in a conversation should be powerful. In a 30-minute conversation, aim for 2-3 powerful questions.

• Happens in the moment: Here is probably the most crucial point to remember about powerful questioning. You can’t plan it! Formulaic questions outlined before the conversation won’t work. You have to be in the moment.

There is no script for asking powerful questions. There is, however, an often-overlooked trait that will set you up to ask powerful questions in any situation.

What’s the trait?

Curiosity. Want to discover a master of curiosity? Find any 3-year old and watch them for an hour. They ask what, why and how to nearly everything they see in the world around them. They want to know more and do not limit themselves to the societal expectations of what’s right or wrong. They just ask.

As we get older, we are trained to lose our curiosity when it becomes clear it’s not acceptable to ask all the questions that come to mind. Instead, we go about our days having surface-level conversations, rarely digging more in-depth with a co-worker, client or even a friend.

The secret to asking more powerful questions is digging deeper. It’s triggering our 3-year old selves and reconnecting with our curiosity.

I found it hard to come up with a way to share this concept with you. I realized it’s so hard to explain because, as adults, there are very few situations where we are curious. Then I remembered riddles. They are a great way to bring the curiosity right back. Try this one out.

“What has a head, a tail, is brown and has no legs?”

As you are reading this, trying to figure out the answer, your mind is swirling with questions and possibilities.

What kind of animal has no legs?

Is it an animal?

What else could it be?

What sorts of things have tails?

The series of questions running through your head is your curiosity showing up. It’s the little kid inside of you wanting to understand, to know. Curiosity is the genuine desire to learn more -- to explore.

To be able to evaluate people, teams or situations with greater fidelity, go back to the curious part of you that wants to explore. Instead of restricting yourself, open yourself up and allow your mind to ask any question.

Allow yourself to ask the powerful questions. You already have them in you.

Sometimes it may take priming yourself with a riddle to get you there.

“What has a head, a tail, is brown and has no legs?”

A penny.

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.

CNN  — 

ChatGPT might not be a cure-all for answers to medical questions, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Long Island University posed 39 medication-related queries to the free version of the artificial intelligence chatbot, all of which were dump questions from the university’s College of Pharmacy drug information service. The software’s answers were then compared with responses written and reviewed by trained pharmacists.

The study found that ChatGPT provided accurate responses to only about 10 of the questions, or about a quarter of the total. For the other 29 prompts, the answers were incomplete or inaccurate, or they did not address the questions.

The findings were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Health-Systems Pharmacists in Anaheim, California.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s experimental AI chatbot, was released in November 2022 and became the fastest-growing consumer application in history, with nearly 100 million people registering within two months.

Given that popularity, the researchers’ interest was sparked by concern that their students, other pharmacists and ordinary consumers would turn to resources like ChatGPT to explore questions about their health and medication plans, said Sara Grossman, an associate professor of pharmacy practice at Long Island University and one of the study’s authors.

Those queries, they found, often yielded inaccurate – or even dangerous – responses.

In one question, for example, researchers asked ChatGPT whether the Covid-19 antiviral medication Paxlovid and the blood-pressure lowering medication verapamil would react with each other in the body. ChatGPT responded that taking the two medications together would yield no adverse effects.

In reality, people who take both medications might have a large drop in blood pressure, which can cause dizziness and fainting. For patients taking both, clinicians often create patient-specific plans, including lowering the dose of verapamil or cautioning the person to get up slowly from a sitting position, Grossman said.

ChatGPT’s guidance, she added, would have put people in harm’s way.

“Using ChatGPT to address this question would put a patient at risk for an unwanted and preventable drug interaction,” Grossman wrote in an email to CNN.

When the researchers asked the chatbot for scientific references to support each of its responses, they found that the software could provide them for only eight of the questions they asked. And in each case, they were surprised to find that ChatGPT was fabricating references.

At first glance, the citations looked legitimate: They were often formatted appropriately, provided URLs and were listed under legitimate scientific journals. But when the team attempted to find the referenced articles, they realized that ChatGPT had given them fictional citations.

In one case, the researchers asked ChatGPT how to convert spinal injection doses of the muscle spasm medication baclofen to corresponding oral doses. Grossman’s team could not find a scientifically established dose conversion ratio, but ChatGPT put forth a single conversion rate and cited two medical organizations’ guidance, she said.

However, neither organization provides any official guidance on the dose conversion rate. In fact, the conversion factor that ChatGPT suggested had never been scientifically established. The software also provided an example calculation for the dose conversion but with a critical mistake: It mixed up units when calculating the oral dose, throwing off the dose recommendation by a factor of 1,000.

If that guidance was followed by a health care professional, Grossman said, they might provide a patient an oral baclofen dose 1,000 times lower than required, which could cause withdrawal symptoms like hallucinations and seizures.

“There were numerous errors and “problems’ with this response and ultimately, it could have a profound impact on patient care,” she wrote.

The Long Island University study is not the first to raise concerns about ChatGPT’s fictional citations. Previous research has also documented that, when asked medical questions, ChatGPT can create deceptive forgeries of scientific references, even listing the names of real authors with previous publications in scientific journals.

Grossman, who had worked little with the software before the study, was surprised by how confidently ChatGPT was able to synthesize information nearly instantaneously, answers that would take trained professionals hours to compile.

“The responses were phrased in a very professional and sophisticated manner, and it just seemed it can contribute to a sense of confidence in the accuracy of the tool,” she said. “A user, a consumer, or others that may not be able to discern can be swayed by the appearance of authority.”

A spokesperson for OpenAI, the organization that develops ChatGPT, said it advises users not to rely on responses as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment.

The spokesperson pointed to ChatGPT’s usage policies, which indicate that “OpenAI’s models are not fine-tuned to provide medical information.” The policy also states that the models should never be used to provide “diagnostic or treatment services for serious medical conditions.”

Although Grossman was unsure of how many people use ChatGPT to address medication questions, she raised concerns that they could use the chatbot like they would search for medical advice on search engines like Google.

“People are always looking for instantaneous responses when they have this at their fingertips,” Grossman said. “I think that this is just another approach of using ‘Dr. Google’ and other seemingly easy methods of obtaining information.”

For online medical information, she recommended that consumers use governmental websites that provide reputable information, like the National Institutes of Health’s MedlinePlus page.

Still, Grossman doesn’t believe that online answers can replace the advice of a health care professional.

“[Websites are] maybe one starting point, but they can take their providers out of the picture when looking for information about medications that are directly applicable to them,” she said. “But it may not be applicable to the patients themselves because of their personal case, and every patient is different. So the authority here should not be removed from the picture: the healthcare professional, the prescriber, the patient’s physicians.”