The Engineer Who Said Yes to Curiosity

International Women in Engineering Day

There is a classic science fiction movie, released in 1968, entitled 2001: A Space Odyssey. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it contains within it one of the most pivotal scenes in all of motion picture history, which, in its iconic and wordless way, sums up all of humankind. A scene where one of the proto-humans looks at the dried leg bone of a long-dead animal and thinks: How could this bone be used? As a tool? As a weapon? Both?

We see these thoughts working through the character’s mind as this new type of thinking takes hold. Then, we expertly transition to the far-off future of 2001, an era of space travel and intelligent computer technology. Without any words at all, these scenes reveal the one remarkable thing about humanity across the ages: curiosity is central to human existence. Curiosity propels us to places we can barely conceive of. Because, even though this was just a movie, this very moment did happen at some point in our collective history.

The Superpower AI Can’t Replicate

A quarter century after the movie’s titular date, it now seems like AI can do anything we can do. But that is not remotely accurate. Humans still retain a unique capacity that comes from being sentient, organic, and ancient; one that blends emotion with logic to process the world around us in a much deeper way than that of AI and computers in general. This remarkable talent, one that we all share, came up in a discussion recently with Deborah Theriault, Crypto Engineering Management Director at Thales. This talent is curiosity. It’s the quiet force that pushes people to explore things they either don’t yet understand or simply to question assumptions, and to imagine alternatives, often starting the thought process with the words “what if…”

Yes, we now exist in a world where AI is rapidly absorbing the routine, predictable, and procedural parts of engineering — or any form of work, for that matter — and the benefit of this is that curiosity is becoming even more valuable.

During my conversation with Deborah, which is available as part of the Thales Security Sessions Podcast series, this theme of curiosity came through powerfully. When I asked her what distinguishes strong engineers from exceptional ones, she didn’t hesitate: curiosity. It was not the ability to know everything, which is really an impossibility, but the willingness and the compulsion to learn continuously, to dig deeper, and to stay open to the presence of the unknown. This mindset has a name. It’s called intellectual humility. It’s the recognition that you don’t know everything, that you can’t know everything, and that the real work of engineering lies in exploring the gaps. Intellectual humility paired with curiosity is an engineering superpower.

Why Curiosity Matters More Than Ever

Not only is information much more accessible than ever, thanks to the internet and AI, but it paradoxically also has a shorter shelf life than at any point in history. AI models update extremely frequently. New cyber threats evolve hourly. Quantum computing is shifting from theoretical to practical. In these changing environments, the notion of mastering a field has become obsolete. It doesn’t matter what you know today, it’s how quickly you can learn tomorrow that counts.

AI, for example, can write code, summarize research, generate test cases, and automate workflows, but it cannot ask original questions. It cannot wonder. It cannot imagine. It cannot challenge its own assumptions. It cannot look at a system and say, “Something feels off here.” It cannot think sideways, because, quite simply, it cannot think.

But this is where humans truly excel. The curious engineer is one who notices anomalies, explores edge cases, questions the obvious, connects ideas across domains, and sees possibilities others overlook. As Deborah said, “AI answers questions, but curious humans ask better ones.”

Curiosity as a Cybersecurity Superpower

Nowhere is curiosity more essential than in cybersecurity. Vulnerabilities are discovered when someone asks, “What if…?” Especially when the question is, “What if an attacker thinks differently than we do?” We can use technology, including AI, to discover vulnerabilities, but so can threat actors, which means we have to think more critically and remain more curious. This is active curiosity paired with passive.

Deborah emphasized this repeatedly. Critical thinking and curiosity are not optional in security engineering; they are the job. Since attackers are endlessly creative, defenders must be too. To give defenders some much needed credit here, attackers are very good at breaking things, which is always easier than building things. Their offensive creativity is noteworthy but still does not match that of what is required to design and manufacture something.

Companies That Turn Curiosity Into Breakthroughs

Some of the world’s most innovative companies have learned to institutionalize this power and have done very well by doing so. They have perfected curiosity as a culture. The most famous examples include the 15% time allotment given to engineers at 3M, to work on personal passion projects or to tinker, for 15% of their working time. This is what led to the invention of the Post-it Note, one of its biggest selling products. Similarly, Google’s 20% time culture produced Gmail and AdSense.

There are numerous examples from more recent decades, too:

• Microsoft’s Garage has become a global curiosity lab, producing tools like Seeing AI and Microsoft Journal.
• Shopify’s Hack Days encourage Canadian engineers to explore ideas outside their sprint cycles.
• Meta’s Hackathons continue to generate major features and internal AI tools.
• Adobe’s Kickbox Program gives employees a literal box, with a prepaid card, to prototype any idea.
• Spotify’s Hack Week blends creativity, engineering, and culture to spark new features and internal improvements.

These branded events aren’t so much “events” as they are strategic investments. They acknowledge a simple truth: curiosity is the engine of innovation. When people are given space to explore, organizations gain breakthroughs they could never have planned.

Curiosity as a Career Strategy

For individual engineers, curiosity is more than a mindset. It can also be seen as a survival strategy. When encouraged and celebrated within an organization, curiosity keeps people employable, adaptable, and energized. It prevents stagnation and turns uncertainty into opportunity. It transforms change from something to fear into something to explore, which is something that has enormous value in any industry today. As such, it is no longer just a personality trait; it can and should be seen as a habit and a practice.

The Future Belongs to Curious People Like Deborah

As Deborah describes her own career path, it is evident that it didn’t begin with certainty, but instead it began with curiosity and the courage to follow it. Significantly, some of this courage was innate, but some was also encouraged by that teacher: the one we all hope will cross our path, as well as the paths of those we care for, the teacher who engages and encourages students, and gives them the spark of confidence which feeds curiosity and ambition.

As she explained in the interview, “I also was very fortunate at a young age to have a very strong mathematics teacher. She actually became the principal of the school, but her being a female really inspired me. And I don’t think that at the time I actually saw it that way. I really just saw her as something to aspire to. So that’s where my love for science and mathematics started. And she was really a big part of that and helped that grow.”

Curiosity as a Path Through Obstacles

The attribute of being curious has an additional side effect of helping surmount obstacles. In the case of female engineers working in a male-dominated industry, the obstacles are quite obvious and sadly persist. But Deborah’s passion for her work and studies in engineering helped neutralize these gender-based concerns, allowing her and her colleagues to focus on the excitement of questioning and discovery. She observed, “Because we’re all scientists and we’re really curious about learning different topics and expanding our knowledge, although I’m not privy to all careers, I would say in the engineering field, I feel that’s really the pursuit for most of us.”

To hear more of Deborah’s story, check out the Thales Security Sessions Podcast episode, Beyond the Algorithm: The Human Skills Engineering Still Can’t Live Without, available wherever you get your podcasts.