SAN MATEO, Calif., May 12, 2026 – SurveyMonkey, the world’s most popular platform for surveys and forms, today announced its State of Curiosity report. The findings reveal a growing disconnect at the heart of modern work: curiosity is alive and well in workers, but the way organizations operate today is suppressing it.
Nearly all workers (95%) say they are at least somewhat curious, 68% say curiosity is important to success at work, and 60% describe themselves as very curious. Yet only 30% say their workplace strongly rewards curiosity, highlighting a gap between how workers think and how organizations operate.
The report introduces the concept of “curiosity capacity”: the ability to stay open, ask sharper questions, and keep learning alongside AI. As AI makes polished answers easier and faster to generate, the differentiator is no longer just what workers produce, but the questions they ask, the assumptions they challenge, and what they notice that AI missed.
As Anne Morriss, founder of The Leadership Consortium, says in the report: “AI allows us to impersonate leadership without doing the hard work of actually leading.”
The three forces draining curiosity at work
The report identifies three workplace dynamics reshaping how curiosity shows up on the job:
The report identifies three workplace dynamics reshaping how curiosity shows up on the job:
- The AI middleman. Directors and VPs are nearly three times as likely as individual contributors to frequently use AI instead of asking a colleague a question (33% vs. 12%). Conversations that once built judgment and shared understanding are being replaced by prompts.
- The scroll reflex. Workers are increasingly settling for the first answer instead of digging deeper. More than a third of workers who use AI say they accept an AI-generated response as-is or after only a quick check, even though most (58%) say they trust colleagues more than AI.
- The efficiency squeeze. Pressure for speed has left little room in the workday for exploration and discussion. Only 38% of workers describe most meetings as spaces for open discussion and idea exploration, while more than half (53%) say more unstructured time would help them be more curious at work.
The cost of not asking
When curiosity gets squeezed out of the workplace, the impact shows up quickly. Half of workers say they’ve had to redo work because the right questions weren’t asked at the start, while 46% say they’ve seen time or money wasted because assumptions went unchallenged. And yet, many workers hesitate to ask questions in the first place: nearly half (44%) say asking too many questions at work makes them look incompetent.
Gen Z workers report the highest rates of pretending to understand something they don’t (41%), feeling pressure to already know the answer (45%), and staying silent because they’ve already asked too many questions (42%).
In the report, Jack Soll, a distinguished professor of management and organizations at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, notes: “AI might make us individually smarter, but the opposing force is going to make us all the same, which might make it harder to be creative and be innovative.”
“We set out to understand what was happening with curiosity at work, and found that curiosity isn’t the problem. The way we work is,” said Katie Miserany, chief communications officer and head of global marketing at SurveyMonkey. “Anyone leading a team today would benefit from a dive into the data. We hope it inspires everyone to start designing workplaces that strengthen curiosity capacity instead of draining it.”
What workers actually want
The report also highlights a clear path forward. Workers point to a few changes that would make it easier to be curious on the job:
- 77% want more opportunities to brainstorm with colleagues
- 70% want more psychological safety to ask questions
- 61% want stronger connections across teams
- 55% want reduced workload
- 53% want more unstructured time
For the full findings, please visit www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/state-of-curiosity-report.
Methodology
This SurveyMonkey study was conducted from April 3-10, 2026 among a sample of 1,925 workers in the US. Respondents for this survey were selected from a non-probability online panel. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2.0 percentage point. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the overall demographic composition of the United States.
About SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is the world’s most popular platform for surveys and forms, built for business and loved by users. We combine powerful capabilities with intuitive design, effectively serving every use case, from customer experience to employee engagement, market research to payment and registration forms. With built-in research expertise and AI-powered technology, it’s like having a team of expert researchers right at your fingertips. Trusted by millions—from startups to Fortune 500 companies—SurveyMonkey helps teams gather insights and information that inspire better decisions, create experiences people love, and drive business growth. Discover how at surveymonkey.com.
