How to Ask Questions

A friend of ours had a little run-in with the state highway patrol. It started with being stopped and ended with a traffic ticket. But the question in the middle made all the difference between a super-positive experience and one he would like to forget. But we will let him tell the story.

“I admit I was driving 70 mph! It was a bright Sunday morning and I was driving on a four-lane highway in a rural area with not a car on the road. Without warning (and without any change in the setting), the speed limit sign dropped the limit to 45 mph. I missed it. It was obviously some local small town’s way of funding their budget—a speed trap with the speed limit sign. But instead of the local sheriff, I met a state highway patrol car. When he suddenly slowed, crossed the medium and quickly pursued me, I realized the error of my ways and pulled to the shoulder. I withdrew my license and insurance proof and waited for my ‘whoopin’!

“The officer reviewed my identification and calmly asked, ‘Mr. Smith, is there an emergency I need to know about?’ I was flabbergasted! Instead of the anticipated, ‘Do you realize how fast you were driving?’ I got a sincere, nonjudgmental assumption that an emergency must be what was driving my decision to drive 25 mph above the posted speed limit. The officer was polite and courteous … and above all, confident. And the impact on me? I was completely honest about the error of my ways and he wrote out my speeding ticket that carried a hefty fine. Guess what? I wrote a thank you note to the state highway patrol department, specifically complimenting this officer.”

How does the mentor start this insight-curiosity-wisdom chain? One major chain starter is the understanding-seeking question. Great mentors, aware that their objective is to foster wisdom, are skilled at asking these questions. Below are several important techniques for crafting and asking questions that produce insight.

Assessing Your Inquiry Talents

The Mentor Scale can be a helpful tool in examining your talents and blind spots with regard to inquiry. Below are a few things to watch out for, tied to the scoring form you completed in Chapter 3.

Sociability

Low: Watch out for too much silence. If the protégé does not answer in ten seconds, she may need you to redirect the question. Also, know that eye contact can be important in conveying a sincere interest in the protégé’s answers. Tape your conversations to self-evaluate your style of inquiry.

High: Beware of not giving the protégé an opportunity to answer. Silence can be golden. Pause after asking a question. If you are susceptible to this trap, count to ten after asking a question and before asking another or rephrasing the one you just asked. Assume that the protégé heard and understood and is simply contemplating an answer.

Dominance

Low: Think before you ask. You may tend to let the interaction wander by asking questions just to ask questions. Consider your goal and focus. Determine what you seek to learn, then choose questions that will take you there.

High: You may have a tendency to craft questions that give you the answer you like to hear. Leading the protégé is just as inappropriate and ineffective as leading the witness. Soften your tone; make sure your approach does not make the protégé feel as though he were on trial.

Openness

Low: Avoid keeping your questions too much on the surface. While invading privacy is not the goal, your aim is to foster in-depth thinking. Be willing to allow a bit of controversy; conflict is nothing more than a symptom of tension. When you accurately interpret and work through conflict by your candor and openness, interpersonal closeness and valuable creativity will be the likely byproducts.

High: You may often find yourself wanting to answer for the protégé. Back off and give the person a chance to communicate her thoughts. It is also important to avoiding getting too personal too quickly. While you may be more than ready to foster closeness, the protégé may need a bit more time.

Start with a Setup Statement

This may seem strange, but the best way to ask an insight-producing question is to start with a statement. Here’s the reason: questions can be more powerful if the sender and receiver are clearly on the same wavelength—and know that they are. Starting with a setup statement establishes identification and context. It creates a milieu that makes the follow-up question much more powerful.

Mentor: (Setup) Jan, you’ve been working for about eight weeks now on the Dunn review.

Protégé: (Answer) That’s right. I’ve had to put in some long hours on it.

Mentor: (Question) What have you learned about the project that you didn’t expect to learn?

Notice how much more effective the question is after the mentor first makes a statement to establish identification (I am on your wavelength) and context (We have now established what area we are focusing on). It communicates to the protégé, “I’ve done my homework, I care, I’m eager to learn with you.” It also helps the protégé to focus cleanly on the question and not on establishing a background to shore up the answer. Imagine how defensive the question alone might make the protégé feel.

Ask Questions that Require Higher-Level Thinking

Remember that the ultimate goal is to create insight, not to share information. Granted, some information sharing may be necessary; the main objective, however, is to nurture understanding and growth, not just exchange facts. Construct questions that require the protégé to dig deep to answer. Questions that force comparisons can accomplish this: “What are ways the Hollar project was different from the Dickinson project?” Questions that require synthesis can induce deeper thinking: “What do you see as the key implications of Mr. Rivers’s assessment?” And questions that call for evaluation can provoke higher-level thinking: “If you could handle that assignment again, what would you do differently?”

The conventional wisdom on questioning has always been to ask open-ended questions. Closed questions, the lesson goes, will cause the receiver to deliver a short, single-word or single-phrase answer. However, the process is more complex than that. Socrates’sunderstanding-seeking questions did not just make the slave talk—they made him think. Anyone with a teenager knows that the answers to questions beginning with “what,” “how,” and “why” can be as short as those for a yes-no question. The intent of questioning to seek understanding is not just more words in the answer but more depth in the thinking needed to produce the answer.

Avoid Questions that Begin with “Why?”

Why avoid “why” questions? The point was made earlier, but it bears repeating. In most cultures, a sentence that begins with the word “why” and ends in a question mark is usually perceived as judgmental and indicting. Granted, body language can play a role in how such questions are perceived, but even with perfect body language, our antennae go up as soon as we hear a “why” question.

Find ways to soften the interrogatory question. “Why did you do that?” can sound very different from “What were your reasons for doing that?” The word “why” is not the problem; it is putting “why” on the front of a question. As we learned earlier, judgment can turn an open atmosphere into one of protection, caution, and guarded behavior. Without vulnerability there is no risk; without risk there is no experimentation and growth.

Use Curiosity to Stimulate Curiosity

Socrates did more than ask good questions. Socrates demonstrated an enthusiasm for the learning process. He believed in it and was excited to participate in demonstrating it. Attitude is as much a part of the Socratic method as technique.

A few years ago, stereographic pictures became the rage. People stared at them for long periods, trying to find the image or object among what seemed a random mixture of colored dots. A teenage girl in a shopping mall helped her boyfriend “see” a picture she had earlier figured out. The girl and boy were equally curious, both eager for the image to be discovered again, both excited when the insight finally came to him. Mentoring is like that.

Great mentors are not only curious; they are excited by the opportunity to stimulate other people’s curiosity. Their attitude is “I can’t wait to see the lights come on for you!” They are open about their excitement and verbally communicate pleasure when the protégé’s “Aha!” finally comes.

Take stock of the greatest mentors down through the ages—Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, to name a few. Their influence was due in part to their ability to challenge their learners with thought-provoking questions. The same is true of modern mentors. In a study done a few years ago, Fortune 500 CEOs were asked what contributed most to their success.² Many listed an effective mentor as one of the key factors. To the question of what made these important people so influential, the most common response harkened back to mead and Socrates: “They asked great questions.” Questions are the jewels of mentoring.