Asking daft questions about business

I was thinking about all of those business jargon words and phrases that come up all the time.

The ones that we don’t have a clue what they mean, but we feel that we’ll look daft if everyone finds out that we don’t know.

Everyone wants to ask the daft questions

The most extreme example of this is when someone was pontificating about the importance of CPO.  I was racking my brain as to what this could mean, and eventually had to ask because it was bugging me, and I don’t mind looking stupid (well not too much.)

It turned out this guy meant CPD (Continuing Professional Development) not CPO and everyone else had been trying to work out what he was going on about as well.

Although it turns out that there are dozens of meanings for CPO as well, he could have meant Chief Petty Officer or Certified Prosthetist and Orthotist, or any number of the CPO’s on this list for you jargon collectors.

The lesson for me here was to ask, because often everyone else in the room will be wondering exactly the same question, and they’ll be grateful to you for asking.

Other business jargon definitions to ask daft questions about

If you want some good definitions of business jargon, I’ve been collecting some good ones here, and giving my plain English version of them

Business jargon Part 1 – Sensitivity analysis and KPI’s

Business jargon part 2 – Opportunity cost, scaleability and marketing collateral

Business jargon part 3 – Discounted cashflow and ROI

Photo credit – thanks to Duncan Hull