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Asking Good Questions
Chapter 3.2 (Next Step)
Draft 4/17/09
“You can tell whether
a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his
questions.” --Naguib Mahfouz
When I was in training to become a
psychologist, my first client was a depressed patient whose problems far
exceeded my limited skills. During
our initial meeting, she asked an apparently simple question about therapy
which I answered. When my
supervisor reviewed the tape of our session with me, he coached me about this
part of our encounter. “Why did
you answer the question?” he asked.
“You didn’t really know what she was saying. In the future try asking some questions yourself to probe
more deeply first before responding.”
When I began my next session with a
teenage client who had been sentenced to therapy as an alternative to
punishment for a drug-related offense, I was prepared. Halfway into our hour, he asked me the
time. Instead of answering
immediately, I replied with a question of my own: “Why do you ask?” His responses and my follow-up
questions led us into a very good discussion of his frustrations and
resentments. Good questions made
that possible.
What are good questions? Good questions are those that create
new understanding and insights. The best are ones that you learn from
regardless of the answer you receive.
Here are some examples:
What happened? Why did that
happen? Why not something else?
What could we have done differently?
Why would that make a difference?
Good questions often come in a series of pairs of what and why: What happened? Why? What can I do about that? Why? And so
on. First, you establish the facts
or options; then you probe for reasons.
Sometimes it helps to dig more
deeply. In quality management, for
example, the “5 Why’s” technique demonstrates the benefits of asking a
succession of “why?” question to get beyond surface explanations. By additional probing, you don’t permit
a generalization to stand as the final answer. You slow the process down, making it harder to jump to
unsupported conclusions. Each
question yields a deeper level of understanding progressively moving from
superficial reactions to thoughtful insights. (The same technique is often used by persistent
pre-schoolers with the same effect, unless their parents cop out with the
generic “because I said so.”)
Not all questions are created
equal. Here is a simple example
that demonstrates the principle.
In the child’s game “20 Questions,” one player thinks of a number between
1 and 1,000. The other has 20
chances to ask a “yes or no” question in order to zero in on the right
number. In this instance, there is
a best question strategy: “Is the number greater than (or less than) 500?” Compare this to: “Is the number greater
than 300?” or worse: “Is the number 425?”
In the first instance, either answer (yes or no) yields the same result;
it reduces the number of possibilities from 1,000 to 500. The second question may reduce the
possibilities to 300 or 700 depending on the answer, while the third approach
yields 1 vs. 999 possibilities.
Using the first strategy, a questioner can reliably get to the correct
answer in 10 steps. Using the
third strategy will yield the correct answer within the 20-question limit only
rarely, and with luck.
What does this mean for you? Making the most of your experience
requires that you get the full benefit of each situation you encounter. If, however, you take a shortcut by making
assumptions about the situation, yourself, or other people, you miss the
opportunity to learn something new.
You come out of an experience no smarter than when you went in.
How would you play “20 Questions”
in real life? The key
principle is to ask open-ended questions that you do not already know the
answers to. These are questions that
will yield new insights regardless of the answers. For example, if you were managing a situation where you
received a lot of customer complaints about timeliness, your strategy should be
to use a series of interlinking what and why questions to acquire the facts,
learn the reasons or causes, identify options if appropriate, and clarify the
criteria for choosing among them.
Application: You can
ask questions of anyone who might have insights that will help you grow. You are one of those people. Asking yourself questions is a
great way to capitalize on experience.
You know more than you think you know, especially when you don’t let
yourself be satisfied with superficial first impressions.
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