Chapter 1
Changing the Way You Think
I know you won’t believe me but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.
—Socrates
What do you know that I don’t know, that I wouldn’t know if I didn’t ask?
—Jim Pyle
“Changing the way you think” has a number of different meanings in the context of learning to excel in the art of questioning. The structure and flow of effective questions probably won’t come naturally to you. You will rewire your brain a bit as you refine the art. The most important change is to make questioning a discovery, to see it as an expression of open-minded curiosity.
Some people hesitate to ask questions because they see it as probing or prying, an intrusive act that makes others uncomfortable. In reality, questioning should be the opposite. It is a way to show other people you are interested in them; it’s more like a handshake than a poke in the ribs.
When I was 19 years old, I started Bible College and became a preacher. For seven years, I gave the congregation all kinds of answers to their problems and never asked them a single question. When I realized all I did for a living was push information at people—and get paid almost nothing for it—I decided to change professions. I got a job that involved as much questioning and listening as it did talking, and it turned out to be a dream come true: I sold cemetery plots. This was no ordinary cemetery, though. It was Forest Lawn Memorial Park, which at the time was the perpetual home of Humphrey Bogart, Nat King Cole, Walt Disney, W.C. Fields, and Clark Gable, among other celebrities. (Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson have since joined them.)
I went door to door and asked a lot of questions: How much is peace of mind worth to you? What would your wife do if you suddenly passed on? What is stopping you from making the decision right now? In answering questions like these, people invited me into their lives. I learned more about their family life, values, fears, health, and finances than I ever knew about most of the people I preached to in the years prior. Forest Lawn Memorial Park represented human connections to me, as well as a substantial increase in income. It turned out that asking the right questions was rewarding on at least two levels.
FOCUS ON DISCOVERY
As part of developing this book, I engaged in series of exchanges with a woman named Judith, whom I had just met.1 These conversations set the stage for learning the first rules of good questioning. They also spotlight why you need to change the way you think to hone your questioning skills.
Judith had no exposure to my questioning process prior to our exchanges. Going into the session, she didn’t even know as much as you know now, which is the importance of focusing on only one thing at a time. In my first conversation with Judith I was trying to get driving directions to a place I’d never been. To make it more challenging, she does not drive a car, nor has she even tried to do so in the past 25 years because of a depth-perception problem. (At least she has a legitimate excuse for having had eight minor accidents during her driver’s education class.)
Judith has a limited sense of cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west), and relies on a combination of buses and light rail to get where she needs to go, so her awareness of street names between Point A and Point B is minimal. I wanted to see if my questioning could lead to my own understanding of how to drive from her home to a destination that was unknown to me. I asked questions such as, “What is the route you take to get from here to the bus stop?” and “How long does it take you to walk from your house to the bus stop?” I asked, “What do you see out the window of the bus?” and “What else do you see?” From these questions, I was able to piece together driving directions, segment by segment, up to the final segment of the journey. In that final segment, from the above-ground rail, Judith walks through a residential area to the location. It’s a footpath, so it’s not the way a driver would be able to go. Asking her what she would see in front her, to the left, right, and behind when she arrived at the destination did provide the necessary information to determine how a car would access the property. It wasn’t perfect, but the 360-degree view gave me enough clues to find the location.
Questions such as “What do you see where you are now?” encourage the subject to envision key locations as though she were making the trip at the moment. In questioning for directions, you want to see what that person sees; you use that person’s eyes.
Now imagine you’re doing the same exercise with someone who doesn’t know cardinal directions, speaks a different language (so you’re relying on an interpreter), and walks wherever he needs to go—and what he knows could help you save lives. That’s what a battlefield interrogator might face.
SOCRATES AND YOU
The point of an exchange such as the one I had with Judith-the-non-driver is to prove that it is possible for good questioning to yield the information you need from a source who doesn’t even realize she has anything worthwhile to contribute. For example, good questioning of people in the vicinity of an accident or a crime sometimes turns passersby who think they know nothing into key witnesses.
Michael Dobson, author of the book Creative Project Management, blogged about just such a situation that had happened to him:
Today, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, is the 35th anniversary of a killing spree in Wheaton, Maryland. My girlfriend and I were on our way home from Young Frankenstein when we drove right through the middle of it.
Michael Edward Pearch shot seven people, all African-American, killing two and wounding the rest. There were indications, police said, that the shooting was racially motivated. All the victims were black and the gunman was white. He passed up at least one car with whites, said police, as he walked down a highway looking for another target.
There were at least two such cars. One of them was mine.
Pearch, an unemployed carpenter living with his mother in Silver Spring, Maryland, left home about 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 13, 1975, and drove to the nearby Wheaton Plaza shopping mall. He was wearing his Army fatigues, a knapsack with 250 rounds of ammunition, and a machete strapped to his chest. He carried a .45 caliber [semi-]automatic pistol.
He walked to the traffic light at the entrance to the mall, where he shot and killed [one man, wounded his wife, and fired at another man].
The panic started at once. “Some witnesses ducked for cover. Others just stood there and watched in disbelieving shock,” said police captain Miles Daniels. One particularly brave man called the police and began following the gunman.
We were on our way home from the movies. It was a warm spring evening. The car windows were open. As I neared the intersection of Georgia Avenue and University Boulevard (a major intersection), I heard what I thought at first were gunshots.
But gunshots on a lazy Sunday evening on a busy suburban street? Surely, I must be imagining things. Then I saw the man who had followed the gunman. He was ducking behind cars. Well, if there wasn’t any gunfire, then surely the man was just playing some sort of game.
The light turned green. I pulled forward. As I reached the intersection, I saw two men in the left turn lane on the other side of the street. One man was standing. He was white. One man was face down. He was black. In his right hand, he was carrying a brown paper bag.
If there wasn’t any gunfire, and the man ducking behind cars was playing some sort of game, then I figured I was looking at some drunks, with one of them (clutching his booze in a brown paper bag) passed out in the street.
As I drove through the intersection, I passed within five feet of Michael Edward Pearch, the shooter, and his most recent victim.…
There was a police station about a mile north of the intersection, right on our way home, so I pulled in. “There’s a drunk passed out in the left turn lane at Georgia and University,” I told the officer at the desk.
“Wait here,” the officer said.
Moments later three plainclothes officers came out of the back room. “Are those the eyewitnesses to the murders?” one of the officers asked.
It was not until that moment that I had any idea what I had seen.
We spent the rest of the evening in a room with an increasing number of witnesses. It wasn’t until afterward that I learned the rest of the story.2
At the time Dobson watched incidents unfold from his car, he had no idea he was collecting pertinent information for a murder investigation. Most of us have experiences like this on a less dramatic level, and when someone asks the right questions, he extracts that information from us and puts it to use. It could be something as simple as knowing where the capers are shelved in the grocery store; you may never have bought capers, but you’ve passed by them so many times you know where they are when someone asks.
This is the approach that Socrates famously took in Plato’s dialogue Meno regarding the slave boy who had never studied geometry but was able to solve a complex geometry problem simply by responding to Socrates’ series of questions. In this part of the conversation Socrates explains to Meno how the boy who knew no geometry could accomplish such a feat. It perfectly illustrates the Socratic Method—and gives you one more good reason to learn how to question well.
SOCRATES: What do you think, Meno? Has he answered with any opinions that were not his own?
MENO: No, they were all his.
SOCRATES: Yet he did not know, as we agreed a few minutes ago.
MENO: True.
SOCRATES: But these opinions were somewhere in him, were they not?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: So a man who does not know has in himself true opinions on a subject without having knowledge.
MENO: It would appear so.
SOCRATES: At present these opinions, being newly aroused, have a dream-like quality. But if the same questions are put to him on many occasions and in different ways, you can see that in the end he will have a knowledge on the subject as accurate as anybody’s.
SOCRATES: This knowledge will not come from teaching but from questioning. He will recover it for himself.
QUIZZING THE KNOW-IT-ALL
A reverse exercise to the one I did with Judith on directions is having someone who knows nothing about a subject question someone who’s an expert. Judith kindly served as the interrogator and came into the process with no training in questioning and almost no knowledge of the subject, which was car racing. Her questions reflect the kind of structure common to someone who wants to build rapport, but has no idea how to do that while concurrently extracting the information she wants. In this case, her secret objective (which she documented without my knowledge) was to discover how I felt about Danica Patrick as a professional driver. Maryann simply instructed Judith to move into a conversation about race-car driving in a comfortable way and then subtly find out what I thought of Patrick.
Her opening question was perfect: “How long have you been a fan of racing?”
“50 years.”
Her second question is typical for a journalist, for example, who may not know anything about the subject matter, but wants to seem informed: “So, do you like NASCAR rather than drag racing, or something else?” The flaw in the question is that it suggests an answer and it doesn’t follow the one-thing-at-a-time rule. A better question would be: “What kind of racing is your favorite?” As I go through this real scenario, consider that this untrained questioner is a very bright person who listens to news interview programs, stays on top of Presidential press conferences, and has unusual gifts at rapport-building. All of that aside, she loses ground almost immediately by asking a bad question.
I responded, “I’ve never been to a drag race, but I’ve been to lots of NASCAR races.”
“And do you travel around—mostly around here or go places like the Indianapolis 500?” Again, the question addresses more than one area of the topic, but that’s not its only problem. As is typical for journalists, for example, who want to demonstrate they know something about a subject about which they know very little, Judith has thrown in the name of the only race she knows. As you listen to news interview shows, pay attention to name dropping like this. It suggests to the undiscerning listener that the journalist probably has a handle—at least somewhat—on the topic of discussion, but in fact it may show that the person really has no idea about the subject area. In short, it’s better to say less in the question than more.
“Last weekend, I just came back from the Indianapolis 500, which is not a NASCAR race. It is an open-wheel style car. NASCAR is a full-bodied car. But I’ve done both over the years.”
Her next question was almost on target: “Do drivers who do NASCAR also do the Indianapolis 500, although that’s a slightly different class?” A better question, which would have inched her closer to getting the information she wanted, would have been: “What NASCAR drivers also drive at the Indianapolis 500?”
My answer to her question still allowed her to pursue the path of finding out how I felt about Danica Patrick, but the exchange was protracted. In response to “do they do both,” I said, “They used to.”
Had she asked the “what” question, I probably would have said, “None, but there are some drivers who have done both.” That statement would have logically provoked the question, “Who are they?” One of the answers is “Danica Patrick.” With that response, she had a clean opening to ask me how I felt about Danica Patrick as a driver.
The take-aways from this unschooled, spontaneous exchange are primarily:
1. Most of Judith’s questions throughout the entire 20-minute interview were yes/no questions: “Do you travel around...?” and “Do drivers...?” I gave a narrative response, but strictly speaking, I could have just said yes or no, just as President Obama could have given yes-or-no answers in the press conference referenced in the Introduction. In a situation in which a suspect or adulterous spouse is responding to questions that could incriminate him or her, this style of questioning is completely ineffectual.
2. By not using interrogatives for most of the interaction, a great deal of extraneous information—I’ve spared you the full conversation—entered into the exchange. Rapport-building was certainly occurring, but it is possible to build rapport and still drive toward the information you need. About 80 percent of the conversation involved extraneous information. (The use of interrogatives is covered thoroughly in Chapter 2.)
INTRODUCTORY EXERCISES
Judith stuck with me as I took her through three introductory exercises designed to sensitize someone to the elements of good questioning. These exercises help you change the way you think about questioning, step by step.
“Be a kid again,” I told her. “It’s all about discovery.” I asked her to go back in time to when she was about 2 and approach the entire exercise with that mentality. And then I showed her a picture:
“That’s Santa Claus. And he’s coming to your house.”
“Why is he coming to my house?”
“To bring you something.”
“What will he bring?
“Toys. But he’s only coming on one special night.”
“When is he coming?”
“Christmas Eve. And not only is he coming to your house, he’s going to all the houses where children live all over the world—all in one night!”
“How can he do that?”
I begin classes with interrogators with the Santa Claus scenario. The very sight of the jolly fat man brings out the kid in almost everyone. I can’t think of anyone who genuinely committed to a 2-year-old mentality who deviated from good questions in the Santa Claus exchange. In her role as a 2-year-old, Judith automatically switched from a “Do you think...” and “Would you say...” style of questioning to complete commitment to simple, focused questions.
The second exercise begins like this: “What’s the most important thing about the TV game show Jeopardy?” And then we play a little Jeopardy. The obvious point is that everything is stated in the form of a question, beginning with an interrogative, or you lose. For example, here’s a winner:
Alex Trebek reads the answer: “Two of the four Shakespeare plays in which ghosts appear on stage.”
Ken Jennings’ written response is “What are Hamlet and Richard III?”3
And here’s a loser:
“The answer is, ‘Selected some material from a larger work.’”
Wolf Blitzer’s non-question response, which was incorrect no matter how it was phrased, was, “Annotated.”
Alex Trebek replied, “Wolf, things have not worked out as you had hoped for, I’m sure.”4
The third introductory exercise is to explore a subject with which the questioner is unfamiliar, using only simple, one-topic questions that begin with who, what, when, where, or why. With Judith, we chose the topic of being a DJ—that is, playing recorded music for an audience and inserting entertaining commentary as the opportunity arises. This is one of my favorite exercises. Judith began her questioning as follows:
JUDITH: “What did you like about DJ-ing?”
JAMES: “I liked getting paid to play music and drink beer.”
JUDITH: “What was your favorite music?”
JAMES: “One kind I liked to play was classic rock ’n‘ roll.”
Here I gave her an opening to ask a very important question. I said, “One kind I liked...” Whether or not the respondent gives that kind of obvious opening to probe, the next question should be, “What else?” It is difficult to develop the listening aptitude to know when to ask “what else” as well as the discipline to ask it. The rule of thumb is, if you ask a question and get an answer that suggests there might be additional information, ask that question again. So, “What’s your favorite music?” gets a particular answer, and “What else do you like a lot?” is a tightly related question that probes more deeply.
“Who hires you to DJ?” might get a response such as “brides and grooms.” “Who else hires you to DJ?” pulls out at least one more bit of information.
I’m going to leave the DJ scenario briefly to give proper emphasis to the importance of asking “what else?” Ask a child what she had for lunch and she might say, “a sandwich.” A typical follow-up question from an adult would be, “What kind of sandwich?” But the next question in an effective questioning scheme would actually be, “What else did you have for lunch?” You find out she had milk, peaches, and a cookie in addition to the sandwich. Then you ask, “What kind of sandwich?” If you didn’t use that sequence, you may never find out what else the little girl had for lunch because undisciplined questioning follows the bouncing ball. The lesson is this: Stay with that one question and make sure it’s answered before moving on to the particulars.
In a business context the sandwich question might play out like this:
TECHNICIAN: What problem are you having with the software?
CUSTOMER: It won’t let me resize images.
TECHNICIAN: What kind of images?
That conversation leads them down a path of discussing images and the reasons why they can’t be resized, or how they might be resized. Contrast that exchange with the following one in terms of what it means to the flow of conversation and, ultimately, the customer’s sense that the company is really trying to help him.
Effective
TECHNICIAN: What problem are you having with the software?
CUSTOMER: It won’t let me resize images.
TECHNICIAN: What other problems are you having with the software?
CUSTOMER: It won’t let me export images to another program, and it freezes when I try to recolor an image.
TECHNICIAN: Any other problems?
CUSTOMER: That’s it.
At that point, the technician has a package of facts that happen to be interrelated, and he has a firm grasp of how to help the customer. This is the difference between aimless dribbling and passing the ball so your team can score.
Let’s use an example from enemy interrogation to make it clear how this works in a life-and death situation:
INTERROGATOR: What were you doing?
PRISONER: Placing an IED.
An unseasoned interrogator would then ask, “Where?” But a better tack would be, “What else were you doing?”
PRISONER: Surveillance.
INTERROGATOR: What else?
PRISONER: That’s all.
After discovering that the prisoner was doing just two things, then it’s time to ferret out the details of the IED and the nature of the surveillance activities.
At some point the “what else” questions lead the person to say, “That’s it. Can’t think of any more.” Then you know you’re done with that line of questioning and can move on.
Returning to the DJ scenario, Judith then asked, “What kind of rock ’n‘ roll do you consider classic?”
JAMES: I’ll do it by years: ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.
JUDITH: Which style is your favorite?
JAMES: I have a favorite in each decade.
JUDITH: If you look at your favorite from each decade, what similarities do they have? Is there something common to all of your favorites?
That question was excellent. It belongs in the mix and is exactly the kind of imaginative question that can trigger a spontaneous response. So, I’m not suggesting it be eliminated because it doesn’t follow a prescribed flow or structure; I’m just suggesting that the placement of it needs to be carefully considered.
For now, just consider that Judith’s question was designed to draw out psychological information about me, not just facts. The power of a well-structured question like that cannot be underestimated.
Psychological questions can take someone off guard so much that what follows is thinking, and in this case, trying to remember particular songs and what they might have in common. No easy or prepared answers readily came to mind. Alternatively, the lack of response could signal that the subject was making the whole story up and just hadn’t prepared the part of the lie that addresses that question. This is a topic explored in greater depth in Chapter 6.
In the Introduction you learned to find out one thing at a time. Add to that foundational lesson the importance of viewing questioning as discovery, and the two key coaching points in this chapter are:
1. In general, ask for a narrative response, rather than yes or no. An obvious exception is “Will you marry me?”
2. Know when to ask, “What else?”
To do both of these things well, you probably need to fight your impulses. By learning how to question well, you are starting to change the way you think.