The Question That Doesn’t Change Anything (And Changes Everything)
Almost nobody asks for feedback once the decision is made. That’s exactly when it matters most
Three people came to find me after the results were announced.
I’d spent the day at Google’s London HQ as a judge for the first UK edition of Capgemini’s Tech4Positive Futures competition — 24 participants across six teams, backed by Barclays, HSBC, Salesforce, and BNP Paribas, run in collaboration with CodeYourFuture. The brief: use innovative technology to address biodiversity loss or improve life for people with disabilities. The teams had pitched. The scores were in. A winner had been declared, congratulations offered, the event winding down.
One person was from the second-place team. Two were from teams that finished outside the top three. None of them came to argue a point or fish for reassurance. They wanted to know what hadn’t worked. What they could have done better. What the judges had actually thought.
I found it genuinely admirable. I also found it surprising. That’s what bothers me — it shouldn’t be surprising at all.
The easiest moment to skip
Seeking feedback after the verdict is in is the easiest version of feedback-seeking to skip. The decision has been made. Nothing you learn in the next ten minutes will change the outcome. There’s no grade to improve, no job to win, no second chance in the same room. The loop is closed.
That’s exactly why it matters.
When you ask for feedback before a decision, there’s always a strategic element. You want to know how to pitch better, interview more sharply, position yourself for the outcome you want. That’s reasonable. But it’s also motivated — you’re asking because the answer might change something.
The three people who came to find me weren’t there to change anything. They were there because they wanted to understand. That’s a different disposition entirely, and a much rarer one.
What it actually tells you
The teams that competed did serious work. All six brought genuine invention to real societal problems, and the standard was high. The winning team won it outright, and that deserves saying clearly.
What no pitch can show you is what happens next. After the competition, after the job offer, after the project lands.
The willingness to ask for an honest assessment when nothing is at stake suggests someone who takes their own development seriously rather than performing it. A comfort with being told uncomfortable things. That’s the kind of intellectual honesty that’s very hard to teach.
Research and presentation skills can be built through practice and coaching. The disposition to actively seek criticism — not just tolerate it, but go out of your way to invite it when you have every reason not to — is far harder to cultivate. Some have it. Most don’t, and aren’t working to.
I’m confident all three of those people will do well. Not because they asked their questions at the end of a competition, but because what they showed me is a pattern of behaviour that compounds. People who seek feedback learn faster. People who learn faster progress faster. The logic isn’t hard to follow, but the discipline is.
Why this quality disappears
Early in a career, most people are uncomfortable with feedback. They either avoid it, or they hear it and don’t quite know what to do with it. That’s understandable — critique feels more threatening when you’re still establishing yourself, before you have a track record to buffer the blow.
Something else happens further along. As people get more established, feedback-seeking quietly drops away. Not dramatically — nobody decides to stop learning. The structures for receiving it become less formal, the urgency feels lower, and asking for a frank assessment starts to feel slightly undignified. Senior people are supposed to know things. Asking whether you got something wrong can feel like admitting you haven’t yet earned the confidence your title implies.
Most people live both ends of this without ever finding the middle. Uncomfortable with feedback at the start, then done asking for it once they feel established enough. The people who keep at it throughout are rarer than they should be.
A note on the winners
I want to be careful here, because the framing of this piece could suggest something I don’t mean.
Nobody from the winning team asked me for constructive feedback after the results. This is an observation; nothing more. They may have sought feedback from other judges. They may have been caught up in celebrating their well-deserved win, still processing the result, or planning to revisit it in a week. Winning doesn’t mean you’ve stopped growing. The observation isn’t a verdict on character — it’s just one data point.
What interests me isn’t the scoreboard. It’s what you do once the scores are in. That’s the behaviour that tells you the most about a person, and it applies whether you came first or sixth.
What this means for the rest of us
The instinct to seek feedback when nothing depends on it is worth examining in your own practice, not just admiring in others.
When did you last ask for honest critique — not as part of a review cycle or in a retrospective, but unprompted, after something had already concluded? When did you last make it easy for someone to tell you something wasn’t good? When did you last sit with that feedback rather than filing it away or rationalising it away?
The three people who found me after that competition didn’t do anything dramatic. They asked their questions and listened carefully to my answers. But that they did it at all — when the verdict was already in, when there was nothing left to win — is the thing the pitch couldn’t show.
They’ll get better at presenting. They’ll get better at research. They’ll get better at most things, because that is what people who proactively seek feedback do. It compounds. The earlier it starts, the longer it runs.
What question should you be asking but haven’t been?