Building a Culture of Curiosity: Training Bank Staff to Ask the Right Questions and Challenge Effectively

Why Curiosity is the Bank’s Secret Weapon in a Recession 

When market conditions tighten, credit risk rises, and regulatory expectations evolve, the instinct for many banking teams is to narrow their focus and “stay in their lane.” While discipline is important, this narrowing often blinds institutions to emerging risks or untapped opportunities—because the people closest to the issues aren’t speaking up. 

A recession magnifies this problem. Small, unnoticed details—like a change in customer payment patterns, a subtle shift in fraud attempts, or delays in vendor performance—can snowball into larger operational failures. Catching them early requires more than process discipline; it requires a culture of intellectual curiosity and effective challenge across every level of the bank. 

That’s why training staff to ask the right questions, think critically, and communicate upward is not just “nice to have” during a downturn—it’s a mission-critical capability. 

 From “Doing” to “Thinking”: Reframing Staff Roles 

Most operational training focuses on how to do the job—process steps, compliance rules, technology use. This is necessary but incomplete. In a volatile environment, your front line also needs to be trained on how to think about the job: 

• Why this process exists and how it connects to broader bank objectives. 

• Where it could fail under stress conditions. 

• Which signals might indicate an emerging risk or opportunity. 

When staff understand the “why” behind their work, they naturally begin asking more relevant and forward-looking questions. And in a recession, those questions can be the difference between seeing an issue in the data next quarter and spotting it in real time. 

 Teaching the Skill of Asking the Right Questions 

We design training modules that break down curiosity into teachable, repeatable behaviors: 

1. Observe and Compare – Noticing when something is different from the norm (a spike in loan applications from a single industry, a sudden drop in call center complaints about a product, etc.). 
2. Test Assumptions – Asking, “What am I assuming here, and what if that’s wrong?” 
3. Connect the Dots – Linking a change in one area (e.g., a local economic event) to potential impacts in another (e.g., branch traffic, deposit withdrawals). 
4. Seek Context Before Conclusion – Gathering more information before making a judgment. 
5. Frame Questions for Action – Shaping a question so the answer leads to a decision or next step, not just a statement of fact. 

We pair this with scenario exercises that put staff in realistic, recession-driven situations and ask them to surface—and then pursue—the most critical questions. 

 Embedding Effective Challenge Into the Culture 

Asking the right questions is step one. The next step is ensuring those questions actually reach the decision-makers who can act on them. This is where effective challenge comes in: the ability to respectfully question a plan, a decision, or a trend—even when it comes from leadership. 

We incorporate: 

• Jack Welch’s School of Thought – Welch believed that frontline employees should be trained to act as leaders, spotting risks and challenging decisions where appropriate. This isn’t about being disruptive—it’s about preventing blind spots. 

• Safe Escalation Channels – Structured processes that make it clear how, when, and to whom concerns should be raised. 

• Leadership Role-Modeling – Training managers to respond positively when challenged, reinforcing the behavior instead of shutting it down. 

 The Risk of Not Encouraging Challenge 

I’ve seen in my career what happens when effective challenge is not encouraged. At one prior organization, valuable insights from the front line never reached leadership because employees feared pushback. Staff saw early signs of trouble—customer defaults rising in a specific geographic region—but leadership didn’t hear about it until the issue had escalated into measurable losses. 

In a recession, delayed awareness equals lost time, and lost time equals increased losses. Encouraging and acting on effective challenge is one of the lowest-cost, highest-impact risk mitigations you can implement. 

 Tools and Frameworks to Support Curiosity and Challenge 

To make curiosity and challenge more than a slogan, we embed them into daily operations: 

• Question Prompt Cards for staff meetings, encouraging employees to ask at least one forward-looking question per discussion. 

• “If/Then” Playbooks to help staff connect potential external triggers (e.g., rate hikes, regulatory changes) to internal actions. 

• Post-Incident Reviews that focus not only on what happened, but on what questions could have been asked earlier to prevent it. 

• Quarterly Curiosity Labs where cross-functional teams explore emerging risks and propose mitigation strategies. 

 Why This Matters for Operations Leaders 

You are responsible for making sure the bank executes in both steady and stormy conditions. You know that process adherence is critical—but in a recession, execution without curiosity can be just as dangerous as inaction. 

By training your staff to ask the right questions and challenge effectively, you: 

• Spot risks earlier, when they are easier and cheaper to address. 

• Increase organizational agility by surfacing diverse perspectives. 

• Build resilience into your operations without adding significant cost. 

A recession is not just a test of your systems—it’s a test of your people. The right training ensures they’re ready to pass. 

Spinnaker is ready to help you create and deliver this training. Reach out to Shawn Sweeney, Stephanie Brooke Lennon, or Jim Peters today to explore how curating this culture of curiosity and openness could dramatically improve both your risk environment and team morale.