Liberal Arts and the MBA

This Fall semester I will be teaching a Managerial Economics course in the University of Iowa's MBA-PM (for currently employed professionals and managers - hence the PM).  One of the questions that I sometimes get is why do we approach much of the course from a liberal arts perspective as opposed to more of a business perspective.  My answer is that it is not the answers that really matter, but rather the training in critical thinking and questioning the assumptions of the model that is really important for parts of the class.  This does not always go over so well - especially for those that walk in expecting the 5 keys to ??? or the 4 steps to solving ???.  For those who are interested here is a nice piece from the New York Times on exactly this issue.