Here is an excerpt from an article written by Hal Gregersen for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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Kodak. Sears. Borders. The mere mention of any of these companies brings to mind the struggle to stay relevant amid today’s technology and boundless alternatives. But behind each of them lies a deeper story of at least one leader who is or was “sheltered” from the reality of their business.

This dangerous “white space” where leaders don’t know what they don’t know is a critical one. But often, leaders — especially senior ones — fail to seek information that makes them uncomfortable or fail to engage with individuals who challenge them. As a result, they miss the opportunity to transform insights at the edge of a company into valuable actions at the core.

Nandan Nilekani, an Indian entrepreneur, bureaucrat, and politician who co-founded Infosys and was appointed by the Indian prime minister to serve as Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), believes it’s vital to keep this channel of communication open in any leadership position.

“If you’re a leader, you can put yourself in a cocoon … a good news cocoon” said Nilekani during our recent discussion. “Everyone says, ‘It’s alright, there’s no problem,’ and the next day everything’s wrong.”

So how do leaders keep themselves from being isolated at the top? For Nilekani, it comes down to one vital factor: asking and being asked uncomfortable questions.

The question “Why are we the way we are?” inspired him to write his book, Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation, which discusses the education, demographics, and infrastructure of his native country. Following his work with the UIDAI to help create a government database of the entire population of India (named “the biggest social project on the planet”) and his recent campaign for Indian National Congress, the question “How do you get kids to read and how do you get kids to learn arithmetic?” drove Nilekani to create a scaleable solution to bridge the education gap for younger generations in India and other parts of the world. And the umbrella question that defines Nilekani’s leadership journey is, perhaps not surprisingly, “What is it that I can do to have the best possible impact on the most possible people?”

But Nilekani understands that the power of questions doesn’t just rely on the inquiries we’re asking ourselves; it also is triggered through the often uncomfortable questions others ask us. Encouraging this two-way dialogue when it comes to questions, he believes, is critical.

“I consciously go out of my way not only to create an open culture for people, but also having lines of communication to a very wide set of people, because the bad news may not come direct,” he said.

Beyond encouraging a culture of questioning, Nilekani has another way to filter out the spin that employees within an organization may put on an issue for fear of “waking the giant.” He goes straight to the source — his customers.

“I’ve had many situations where customers had a direct line to me and would call up about something. I would know about a problem even before a number of people. So I think it’s important to be that lightning rod that attracts feedback both good and bad,” he explained.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Hal Gregersen (@HalGregersen) is Executive Director of the MIT Leadership Center and a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is co-author of the book The Innovator’s DNA, founder of the 4-24 project, and a frequent speaker on leading innovation and change.