The skill of asking questions

The skill of asking questions

Okay let’s look at the questioning you’ve, probably heard about open, and closed questions, and there are some people who might say that open questions are good and closed questions are bad, we don’t believe that any question can be good it depends on what question is chosen, and how it’s used to help select the type of question.

Our model for questioning is a funneling process, and we talk of open questions at the top of the funnel as you go down, you get towards more probing questions, and at the bottom of the funnel at the end of the funnel you get the closed questions, none are good or bad in their own right.

What is good is using them in the right context, at the top of the funnel, we’re asking open questions, questions like how, or what are typical open questions, it’s very difficult to give a yes/no answer, and you’ll find some people do it’s open it’s the broad top of the funnel,  where we’re trying to suck in as much information as possible, we don’t know what the answer is going to be,  it’s almost an agenda setting question.

Further down the funnel, we’ve got probing questions, probing questions are the when, where, and who types of questions, those questions, that explore further, and at that stage, we might be putting some words around it like, so what would be an example of that, so specifically when is that an issue, we’re wanting more information drawn out of the items that have been offered at the top of the funnel there, and as we move down, we get two closed questions, which might be qualifying, or clarifying questions, the is it have you, will you, those sorts of questions, which are confirming.

Interestingly some of those closed questions are good ways of starting, there’s nothing wrong with starting a conversation with, so is this still happening? so have you done this before? some of those closed questions, which qualify how we’re going to start this, could well be useful, so this reinforces our thought, that there’s nothing good, or bad about any sort of question.

What makes a question good, is it’s been thoughtfully chosen for the right purpose, so you’ll find the difference between diagnostic questioning, which is very much the yes/no is it, which can very quickly get to get you to a known solution, where it’s one of a number of defined ones, here we’re asking questions where we don’t know the answer, and where we want to get the other person to lead us to the solution, where we don’t know what the solution is.

Questions are also very useful if you want to get the other person to think, those sorts of consequence questions, or implication questions as they’re sometimes called, are useful to get the other person to use their brain, and see things perhaps from a different point of view, so a typical consequence question would be, so if that were to keep happening, who do you see might be affected by that? our favorite question has got to be what else, useful to ask what else, as a general question, that often elicits very good information, you might find that the person responding has given a particular slant on an answer, what else often yields good information, as opposed the other thing in preparing, to ask questions, is not to fall into the trap of making a list, certainly be prepared certainly think through, and we got often talk, of a question Bank, so I’ve got a resource to draw on of types of questions that might work in a particular situation.

The idea of a question Bank, would be that I’ve got a range of options to choose from, you sometimes see interviewers perhaps on TV, or you hear them on the radio going down a list of questions, and you think to yourself you missed a trick there because I really wanted to know, at that point something that reflects on what the person said, but actually the interviewer, just went on to their next question, so don’t fall into the trap of just asking a list of questions, listen carefully to the answers, that you’re getting, and see how you can follow on, with a question, that takes them further, to the information that you’re seeking.

So top tips for questioning.

One recognizes that it’s a funneling process, and we need to choose the right sort of question, to get the information that we’re seeking, and the idea of tracking down from the open, through to the probing questions.

Second, when you want to get someone to recognize the consequences of their actions, recognize that asking can often be a lot more effective than telling.

Third, listen carefully to the answers that you get, and ask your next question based on the answer to your previous one.