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INTRODUCTION

Why create a book containing nothing but accounting problems?

The genesis of an idea is often difficult to recall, but I can trace the creation of this project to a single sentence found in a specific book.  One recent summer, to help prepare myself for the upcoming academic year, I began reading Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham.  On page 16 of the dog-eared copy I acquired on the Internet, I was drawn to a key sentence like a moth to a flame.  The words were buried rather unobtrusively within a long paragraph but, for me, they practically leaped off the page.

Sometimes I think that we, as teachers, are so eager to get to the answers that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question.

“Exactly,” said I with enthusiasm to an appreciative audience that included only me.  “Dr. Willingham has managed to identify both a primary problem with education today and the related solution.”

This epiphany, though, was nothing new for me.  Based on more than 50 years of college teaching, I have come to believe rather obsessively in the importance of class problems (which I often refer to as “conversation starters”).  In fact, at the beginning of my career in the early 1970s, I was captivated by a witty observation from the humorist James Thurber, “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”  That seemed like education at a higher level than I had been accustomed to as a student.

Even after so many decades, my fascination with class discussions occasionally leads me to explain to my students the role I plan to play in their education.  “I’m paid enough to ask you questions.  I’m not paid enough to provide you with any answers.”  Although I find this revelation to be amusing, the students are merely puzzled, at least at the beginning of the semester.  During their many years in school, they seem to become programmed to expect that definitive answers will be handed to them by their teachers as the ultimate prize for class attendance.  Hopefully, by the end of our time together, they will come to appreciate the educational logic of emphasizing the intricacies of the questions we discuss in class rather than worrying so much about arriving at perfect answers.

Publication Date

2026

Department

Business

Disciplines

Accounting | Business | Finance and Financial Management

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© 2026 by Joe Hoyle.  All rights reserved.  No part of this work may be used, modified, sold, or reproduced in any form or by any means except as expressly permitted by Joe Hoyle, Midlothian, Virginia

100 Conversation Starters to Develop Student Critical Thinking in Intermediate and Financial Accounting Courses

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