As we continue our focus leaders and accountability, we turn today to “Asking Hard Questions.” While having a structured approach to your accountability relationship is important, being willing to ask and respond to hard questions will determine whether you are actually holding one another accountable or just getting together as friends, Bible study partners or coworkers. While trust building is necessary at the beginning of every meaningful relationship, the sooner you are able to get to the point of asking each other hard questions, the more you will grow through the relationship.
For example, If you are in accountability for deepening your spiritual life, you need to give each other permission to ask whether you have read your Bible, prayed, and applied God’s truth in love in your everyday spheres of influence. This is a “basic level” hard question. It’s a hard question, because it calls you to be honest at the level of daily personal growth. If you committed to reading your Bible every day last week, and you only read it twice, then when the question is asked, you will have the option of telling the truth and admitting your failure in this area, or lying and being a failure in the who concept of accountability.
As your accountability partnership grows you will ask harder and harder questions. For example, in order to move from basic level hard questions to intermediate level hard questions, means moving from the level of activity and performance, to the level of character. You may ask each other, such questions as: Did you cut any corners, or cheat anyone this past week? A yes answer would mean you wasted your company’s time during working hours, or you didn’t invest your full attention with your children when you were talking, playing, or working with them in the past week, or you didn’t show up to your small group, or you didn’t engage if you did. Another question you might ask would be: Did you purposefully participate in any conversations intended to hurt another person’s standing in your company, peer group, family, etc…? You can see why this is a hard question. No one wants to answer yes to this one, but we can all find ourselves engaging in this kind of behavior if we’re not intentional about growing in our integrity on a daily basis.
The hardest question of all ought to be asked at the conclusion of your conversations: Did you lie to me today? While this is a catch all hard question, it ensures that we operate in the arena of honesty. Otherwise, we aren’t holding one another accountable. I know how difficult it is to tell the truth when we’ve messed up in any area of our lives, or the same one ever and over again, but if we don’t we will never grow out of the negative or sinful behavior that is keeping us stuck where we are.
I need to underline the truth we have mentioned a couple times already: trust is the basis for every human relationship, and we aren’t likely to respond to such hard questions in a completely honest manner until we trust our accountability partner to keep the information to himself or herself. The only way we can determine whether he or she will do that is to put ourselves out there and tell something that we have done that is not good. While that can seem brave to some of us and foolish to others, the truth is it is absolutely necessary, or we’re deceiving ourselves when we say we’re in accountability.
Having been in the same accountability relationship for more than twenty years it is easier to admit my shortcomings than it used to be, and to answer the hard questions truthfully, but at times the temptation still exists to respond in a less than honest manner. It’s simply a matter of persevering in the relationship and building on the trust each gives the other, until it becomes easier to tell the truth, even when the truth isn’t pretty. We know we have “arrived” in our accountability relationship when we can celebrate the victories of our partner and tell the times when we really messed up, and our partner responds with affirmation of the victories and correction and encouragement for the messes.
The bottom line is life is messy. The only way to overcome the messiness is to wade in and clean it up. My experience is that happens best in accountability relationships, because over time we help each other clean up the messes together, and we move to deeper levels of growth, productivity and maturity than we will ever do on our own. It all hinges on our willingness to ask and answer the hard questions our accountability partner asks with honesty and humility.
Here’s to leading better, by asking and answering the hard questions that will lead to growth in our lives–today and into the future!