Chapter 4
Discovery Areas
When Maryann was taking flying lessons, her instructor told her she would have to keep “a thousand things” in mind every time she flew. From preflight through landing, he then proceeded to introduce her to the facts and steps that would help her fly safely and bring the plane down in one piece. She asked a lot of questions, like a little kid first learning about Santa Claus. What is that called? How do I slow down? Why am I landing on this runway today?
It would have been an easier learning process if she’d had the benefit of my training in discovery areas. When you link your questions to the four areas of discovery—people, places, things, and events in time—you mentally organize information in a way that makes it simpler to work with.
Questioning will be more robust in one area than another, and that could change throughout the course of the dialogue. The important thing to know is what featured piece of information you seek in your question.
Here’s an overview of the four discovery areas:
1. People may look different and have different professions, and may engage with us differently. But whether the person is a convicted felon or the pastor at a church, you’ll ask essentially the same questions of each to find out what you need to know. Because people are different, however, you will need to ask some questions differently depending on their personality type.
2. Places can also be described in many ways, and have levels of relevance for us. What questions enable you to zero in on the information you need about them?
3. Things have characteristics that shape the content of the question. In determining what to ask, consider ways of categorizing the type of information you might find related to things.
4. Events in time take place in different places and at different times, with time often being a significant factor on which you need to focus. Events also have different meanings, from celebration to protest. Establish your requirements for knowing about time/event, and then focus on the core issues that will illuminate the information you need—for example, the reason for the event occurring at that particular time as opposed to another time.
DISCOVERY AREA #1: PEOPLE
There are a couple of ways to approach “people” as a discovery area: (1) categories of questions and (2) categories of people. The types of questions relate to the kind of information you want or need from someone, and the types of people relate to the way people answer questions, and how you may need to alter your questioning style based on those differences.
Categories of Questions
The three categories of questions are:
1. Personal.
2. Professional.
3. Relationship.
Personal
Simple questions such as “What’s your name?” and “Where do you live?” fall into the category of personal questions, but most are not nearly that straightforward. “How do you feel about...?” or “What do you think...?” questions are the kind that may relate to another category of discovery, but they also reveal something about the individual’s personality and/or point of view. As soon as you leave the realm of the straightforward personal question, pay attention not only to what the answer is, but also to how the question is answered. There is more discussion of that latter issue in the subsection “Categories of People.”
Professional
These questions focus on education, experience, skills, and career objectives. A job interview would be the most logical occasion when questions focused on professional discovery would dominate. Given the legalities associated with interviewing, I would agree with the advice Edward T. Reilly, head of American Management Association, offers about the importance of preparing questions in advance and making sure they elicit narrative responses in his book AMA Business Boot Camp. A job interview is not a time to wing it with your questioning unless you have a great deal of interviewing experience. Reilly suggests:
Ask about a half-dozen prepared questions that are broad enough that the applicant’s responses will trigger additional questions. They would include [invitations and] questions such as these:
Please describe your activities during a typical day at your (present/most recent) job.
What do/did you like most and least about your (present/most recent) job?
Describe a situation in your (present/most recent) job involving___________. How did you handle it?
What are/were some of the duties in your (present/most recent) job that you find/found to be particularly difficult or easy?
How do you generally approach tasks you dislike? Give me a specific example from your (present/most recent) job.
What has prepared you for this job?1
Notice that the “how do you approach” question could fit in either the professional or the personal category. In the context of this series, it has more of a professional flavor because there is more of an experience and skills focus than on a general approach to a bad situation.
Keep in mind also that a job interviews can and should be a two-way information exchange, and if you are being interviewed for a job, it behooves you to ask well-phrased questions to gather the information you need to get the job offer.
Relationship
No man (or woman) is an island. By design and default, we all have personal and professional relationships with others that influence and maybe even define us. Finding out about people’s relationships with others requires good questioning and listening skills to make people comfortable with sharing their information. As a cemetery salesperson many years ago for Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Southern California, the most renowned private cemetery property in the United States, I was often trusted with confidential information about relationships, finances, and personal desires. I could only be successful in that circumstance if I were a careful custodian of the information and the information-gathering process.
In sales, as in life in general, two types of personal information are seldom offered up freely: (1) details about personal finances and (2) intimate information. So in asking anything relationship-oriented, even when you’re asking someone you’ve known for a long time, convey questions with respect and handle the information as if it were a state secret.
When asking about relationships, it’s all too easy to slip into territory that makes the person uncomfortable, so be ready to pull out some non-pertinent questions. You might start off simply with “What’s your boyfriend’s name?” but more probing questions like “What do you like to do together?” may not come across as matter-of-fact. If you really want to engage in a discovery process regarding someone’s relationships, do what good therapists do, which is say some variation of “I’m listening.”
Categories of People
In the course of your exchange with someone, it may become clear that you are dealing with a certain type of individual in terms of how he or she responds to questions. So whether or not your questions related to discovery about people, you have, in fact, discovered what type of person you are talking with. The need for frames, as well as control, repeat, persistent, summary, or non-pertinent questions may arise because of that. Here are the four types of people, followed by how questioning might change depending on the type.
2. Dictator.
3. Commentator.
4. Evader.
Integrator
An integrator weighs the best way to answer your question. She wants to see how you respond to the answer and then may attempt to clarify her response, or may offer multiple answers in a single response so you know she’s considered that there may be several good answers.
Anna, a personal trainer at a gym, was having her first meeting with a potential client, Susan. She opened with, “What are your goals for working out?”
SUSAN: I’d like to lose weight.
ANNA: What other goals do you have, Susan?
SUSAN: Just to lose weight so I look better in my clothes. You don’t have to worry about that, but you know, when you get to be my age...
ANNA: What kind of exercise do you enjoy doing?
SUSAN: I like to take long walks, but I know that lifting weight is really important, and I think I might like that too. I’m really open to whatever you suggest.
ANNA: Why do you think you might enjoy lifting weights?
SUSAN: A lot of my friends have gotten great results, and I’ve never done it before and I tend to like new things, and it would be great to get a little stronger.
In this scenario, the integrator isn’t plagued with uncertainty as much as someone who wants to give a considered response. Susan feels the need to balance her answers. The personal trainer wants to design a program that will get Susan motivated to stick with it, though, so she will probably have to use a repeat question or two to determine what needs to go into that regimen. Anna might ask, “When you go on vacation, what kinds of activities do you try to do?” If, once again, she hears “I like to take long walks,” then she knows whatever program she designs for Susan ought to include a walking component.
Dictator
Donald Trump comes to mind with this type, and there is nothing pejorative in that assessment. A dictator delivers an answer definitively. The negative aspect of a dictator’s response, which may necessitate further questioning, is that he may present a personal opinion as fact. He may also have a decisive quality to his responses that can be off-putting, depending on the circumstances.
The opening of an interview that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly did with Donald Trump on April 1, 2011, in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election captures Trump-as-dictator quite well:
O’REILLY: Why haven’t jobs come back as fast as many people thought they should?
TRUMP: Because they’re going to China. China is taking our jobs and making our product and we have to do something about it and we have to do something about it quickly. They are decimating our country just as OPEC is decimating our country with their oil prices.
O’REILLY: How can you compete with Chinese labor, which is much, much less than unionized American labor? What are you going to do—make a law that says American companies can’t manufacture in China?
TRUMP: By getting China not to manipulate their currency. It’s very tough for our companies to compete with Chinese companies just because, very simply, they manipulate their currency. When you manipulate a currency like that—they’re professionals at it.2
At this point, Bill O’Reilly does what a good questioner should do: He moves into the question more deeply to try to unearth expertise as opposed to—or in addition to—opinion. The questioning continued like this:
O’REILLY: How are you going to do that?
TRUMP: It’s very simple, Bill, and now people are starting to use my thing. The one negative thing about saying it—and frankly, if it’s good for the country, I don’t care—is that now everyone else is starting to say it, and I started it: 25 percent tax on China unless they behave.3
Bill O’Reilly was effectively providing his viewers with both information and opinion. In the interview, he asked questions that surfaced “candidate Trump’s” point of view in addition to his knowledge about the subject matter.
U.S. presidential debates are a prime opportunity to see “dictators” in action. The debates the public rates as “good” are generally those that include questions illuminating the difference between opinion and fact. Persistent and summary questions can force the candidate into a corner in terms of what he or she thinks and knows.
Commentator
A commentator is thorough, giving complete answers and, in some cases, overly complete in the sense that she gives you more than you asked for. She may, in fact, provide such a multifaceted answer that it could take the questioning in a different direction.
For example, in a lie-detection seminar conducted by Greg Hartley and Maryann at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., Maryann asked a woman a question about how she’d spent her morning specifically so she could get a sense of her sorting style—that is, whether she was most focused on time, event, or sequence. Instead of giving a relatively succinct answer as Maryann had expected, she provided the boring details of getting up, showering, eating breakfast—including what she had for breakfast and where—and so on. The woman was clearly a commentator.
Here’s another example: Donna, a change management consultant, quickly discovered that the CEO of a potential client company fit into this category when she asked him, “What kind of struggles are you facing?” He said, “Well, when you’re in the outplacement services business, you make money when other companies are struggling. When our client companies hit good times, then they aren’t laying people off and our revenues drop. Naturally, we don’t want our clients to suffer financially, but we benefit when they do. So we figure we have to find a way to change our business model to reap the rewards of their success and well as their downturns. Here are a couple of ideas we came up with...”
Donna knew that if she weren’t careful, the next part of the conversation would go straight down the track of talking about new business ideas. Without cutting him off rudely, she had to go back to the original question and be sure she got a complete answer to it. She also learned immediately that, in conversation with this CEO, it would be useful to frame her question to narrow the scope as much as possible. A beginning that may have curtailed the response might be, “It would help me understand where to begin if I understood your single greatest challenge. What would you pinpoint as the most important problem facing you right now?”
Evader
Someone who tends to sidestep questions may just have an idiosyncratic way of listening and understanding, rather than wanting to avoid answering because she has something to hide. Evasion could also mean the person feels uncomfortable answering questions for some reason.
I have a friend who is sometimes a source of frustration for me. I can ask her a simple question such as “What did you think of that movie?” and she might answer by telling me how the director has a varied style and she enjoys some of his work but thinks most of it stinks. Her mother has always referred to her as a contrarian because her take on the things she reads and hears often runs counter to what seems logical or common. It’s no coincidence that she is a creative problem-solver, coming at situations from a different angle than most people. It makes her a valuable member of a project team, but that doesn’t lessen the exasperation people sometimes feel when she doesn’t answer the question she was asked.
Persistent questioning can work with her. I didn’t get a straight answer to “What did you think of that movie?” so I can just ask the question again. A better approach is to use a frame and a repeat question: “So you like some of the director’s work and maybe others, not so much. Given a bad list or a good list, where would you put this movie?”
My friend is one type of evader; her brother is another. He is shy, and always has been. When teachers asked him a question in school, he would hesitate, and if he responded, the answer was barely audible. He has a successful career as a programmer and has no problem asking or answering questions via e-mail or text. Cyberspace is his world, and he’s comfortable not being an evader there.
In a face-to-face situation, non-pertinent questions can be useful in getting an evader to open up. If he’s a baseball fan, you might start with, “What did you think of that game last night, Ken?” After he starts talking, then steer the conversation and questions toward the subject you need information about.
DISCOVERY AREA #2: PLACES
Questions related to places could address directions, location, appearance, layout, or function. Unfortunately, many people are not good at conveying directions, pinpointing a location, or giving usable information about the appearance, layout, or use of a building or piece of land. Getting the information you need about places, therefore, means that your questioning must be disciplined. You will use good questions to guide people in telling you what you need to know.
In Chapter 1, I briefly covered a conversation with Judith, a non-driver, in which I was able to get driving directions to a place I’d never been. Now, let’s analyze the questioning methods that make that possible.
Use reference points that are very familiar to the person. Someone who walks to a particular subway regularly can tell you what route she takes, what she sees along the way, and how long it takes her to get the entrance.
If the person does not know cardinal directions, then collect enough descriptions of landmarks, street names, and left-and-right moves to piece together what the directions are in terms of north, south, east, and west. A person riding a subway would be able to say, at the very least, that the train is headed toward a certain stop; from that, you could make a determination of what direction it’s going.
Pay attention to how the person remembers locations and then exploit that knowledge by “talking his language.” If he talks in terms of landmarks, then ask for more detail using landmarks; if he talks in terms of left, right, and straight, then go with that. If you take a few people at random at Union Station in Washington, D.C. (during tourist season, preferably, to get a mix of locals and visitors) and ask, “How do I get to the White House from here?” you get a great sense of how varied the description of how to get from A to B can become. Some people will point west and say, “Just head that way and you’ll run into it in about two miles.” Another person will say, “See that Irish pub over there? Get on the next street over to the left of it and keep going a couple of miles.” A third person will point and say, “Go west down that street until you hit 15th and then take a left.” Still another person would give step-by-step instructions by noting what buildings you would see on the way to the White House: “You’re about halfway there when you get to the FBI Building.” You may be out of luck, however, if the person you’re asking visualizes directions the way Maryann’s friend did when she was guiding her to her house: “When you get to the corner where the old mansion used to be, turn right.”
That last point suggests how many people give “soft” estimates for distance and direction, and how best to describe what they see and how they travel. Teaching is a challenge in this area because some interrogation students have difficulty with the basics. After teaching for three hours on how to understand, read, and utilize a map—a necessary skill despite the availability of GPS technology—I gave a class the requisite quiz. One of the questions concerned the various colors of the map, specifically, “What does the color blue depict on a map?” With my hand over my heart, which did nothing to save me from an apoplectic fit, I read one of the answers: “The sky.” Whenever you think of yourself as deficient in giving directions, think of the soldier who gave that answer.
Some of the questions and techniques you want to use to turn soft estimates into hard information include the following:
When facing the rising (or setting) sun, which direction are you facing?
[Establish a common point of reference] From the McDonald’s restaurant on the south of Rolling Road, just across from the Saratoga housing entrance, what route would you take to get to the Peterson Elementary School?
What type of surface are you traveling on?
What is the name of the surface you are traveling on?
What is the speed limit?
How many minutes does it take to get to the school if you are driving the speed limit?
While traveling on that road toward the school, what do you see?
[Establish a new common point of reference] You said you see an intersection. What buildings are on that corner? [You recognize the corner from the reference to a Ford dealership.]
From that intersection with the Ford dealership on the corner, how long does it take you to get to the School?
Many of us have become so accustomed to having a GPS device in the car, and even on our bodies in the form of a smartphone, that we take for granted that we will always be able to find a route to where we want to go. Just in case technology disappoints you—and it will at times—be prepared with your place-related questioning skills.
DISCOVERY AREA #3: THINGS
Before asking questions about a thing, consider the category it falls into:
Mechanical—Examples would be a hammer or a bicycle.
Electronic—Examples include smartphones and digital watches.
Structure—Here, you are talking about a building or other stationary, man-made object.
Process—This would be something like a recipe for making stew or fractional distillation.
Concept—Capitalism is a thing; so is socialism.
Expendable—Toilet paper is a good example.
Many products today combine mechanical, electronic, and expendable aspects, so it is common to get crossover. A car, for example, has mechanical parts, electronic components, and expendable pieces.
Questioning about things may very well be the easiest discovery area of all. I have always told my students, “You can find out everything about anything without knowing anything!” Aside from poor grammar, I find this statement to be 100-percent true. It’s easier if you don’t know anything because your “2-year-old’s curiosity” kicks in and away you go.
Now I want to take you into my classroom and allow you to follow the discovery questioning that begins with a completely unknown item that is identified, and, after a round of questioning, will be completely understood as to its name, purpose, process, components, and how those components work. In this exercise I introduce a black box. I know the students have no clue what is in the black box—and you don’t either—because just in 2013 it has been awarded a U.S. patent and is unique in its area of development and application. I not-so-modestly introduce myself as a subject matter expert on this particular device and will answer any well-phrased question and follow-up question the students ask.
I present you a picture of the box:
What is that?
“An ELS.”
What is an ELS?
“An Electronic Language Simulator.”
What does an ELS do?
“It is a training support device to assist Human Intelligence Collectors in learning how best to question using an interpreter.”
Reflect back on what I labeled the key interrogatives: who, what, when, where, how, and why. Now is about the time when the seventh interrogative finds its way into the discussion: “Huh?” I consider it a legitimate direct question.
At this point, I remind the students that they do not have to understand it immediately. The exercise is to keep asking unbiased, curiosity-based questions to gain complete knowledge about it quickly. I open the box and show them the front panel.
Other interrogatives come into play:
How does it work?
“This device, coupled with peripherals of microphones and headphones and an interpreter switch box, creates an artificial language between two individuals. That sound pattern requires an interpreter to assist in communication, much like an interpreter skilled in a known foreign language would do.”
Here comes “Huh?” again. It’s time to question more deeply.
Why do you need an ELS?
“The cost of training Department of Defense intelligence collectors is steep at best and that expense curve multiplies when language-proficient linguists are introduced into the training cycle. The ELS is a cost-saving device that takes a common language, say, English, and electronically converts it into a simulated non-actual language and creates a functional interpreter training environment.”
Who uses this device?
“Many are in fact employed by Department of Defense training schools throughout the United States.”
What components make up the ELS?
If you are really focused on learning about the “thing,” this is a great question. It’s analogous to asking a sales pro at the car dealership questions such as, “What kind of engine does it have?” “How many USB ports are in the console?” “Does it have leather seats?”
In the case of the ELS, I would answer, “Headphones and microphones.” I always hold up here to see if the students will ask the follow-up as I’ve taught them.
“What other components make up the ELS?” I hear this and give a mental fist-pump, realizing that they’ve actually paid attention. I respond by telling them the rest of the components, including a pre-amp, voice processors, mixers, and so on.
Given time and interest, the students can find out every single detail of the ELS—everything required for a successful patent application, and more. They can discover the components, connectivity, cost, applications, and the fact that it was inspired by the Peanuts character Charlie Brown. In the Peanuts videos, when adults speak, Charlie Brown and his friends hear only mwhahmwhahm-whah. They live in a kid’s world so nothing that adults say registers with them.
And then, during the course of the questioning, comes the most important question: “Why do you know so much about the ELS?” and I proudly reply, “Because I am the inventor.” Anytime someone is an expert in an area you are questioning, don’t ever forget to find out why they know so much about whatever the subject is, because you will then find out something more about the person, and it’s always about them and not you.
DISCOVERY AREA #4: EVENTS IN TIME
When your questioning focuses on an event, you begin by questioning a photo and end up with a movie. In other words, an event is connected to its past and future, as well as its present. It occurs at a particular time, but it occurs in the context of a series of events: Something related to it preceded and followed it. For example, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has kept generations asking questions about what happened just before and just after the event in an attempt to understand that moment when bullets hit the presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas. We know that merely seeing the moment of tragedy is only a sliver of the story. Similarly, the vision of hooded executioners placing the noose around Saddam Hussein’s head is a memorable scene, infused with different emotions for different people. And everyone who has that scene in his head thinks of the events that led up to the execution as well as those that followed.
Using the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York as the event in this section, let’s consider the kind of questions that would yield an understanding of the attack and its context. Guiding the questions is the knowledge that much planning, as well as implementation of early stages of the plan, preceded the event. There were people (terrorists) involved, who used things (box cutters, airplanes), with the intent of reaching a place (World Trade Center). The event itself involved people (terrorists, victims, onlookers), things (airplanes, fire), and places (target areas for attack). Two branches of questioning follow the event: The first is related to what actually transpired following the attack, and the second addresses the intended aftermath that never occurred. Both are necessary to understand the event itself.
Questions regarding the event itself—or in this case, two tightly interconnected events—would include when, where, what, who, how, and why:
When did the events occur? On September 11, 2001.
Events are locked in time. Exactly when did they occur? At 8:46:40 a.m. and 9:03:11 a.m.
Where did they occur? First at the northern façade of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and second, on the southern façade of the South Tower.
Events are locked in place as well as time. Exactly where did they occur? The North Tower, between the 93rd and 99th floors, and the South Tower, between the 77th and 85th floors.
What was involved in the incidents? Aircraft.
Events involve specific things. What aircraft? Two Boeing 767 jets.
Who was involved in the events? Islamists belonging to al-Qaeda.
Who else was involved? People in the buildings and people on the streets nearby.
Who else was involved? People in the airplanes.
How were the al-Qaeda members involved? They flew the planes into the buildings.
How were the people in the buildings and on the streets involved? Their lives were either taken or endangered.
How were the people in the airplanes involved? They were killed.
How many people were killed? The death toll was set at 2,753, excluding the 10 al-Qaeda members aboard the two planes.
Why did the events occur? Osama bin Laden had convinced followers in al-Qaeda that each had an individual duty to destroy designated enemies of Muslim countries.
Notice that the questions were asked without bias. The attacks were not referred to as such and the al-Qaeda members were not referred to as terrorists because then the questions would become leading questions. To get a complete picture of the event—the movie version, rather than the freeze-frame version—you would ask the same kinds of simple, unprejudiced who, what, when, where, why, and how questions about the moments and even years that came before and followed the attacks.
Is it possible to become so dispassionate about one of the most tragic, human-caused events of current generations? That is the job of a good questioner.
There’s a shadow box in the hallway at the Strategic Debriefing School at Ft. Huachuca. It displays an American flag along with concrete, glass, and steel from the World Trade Center buildings that were destroyed. We put a plaque on it that holds a statement that I and my co-instructor Mike Fierro wrote for the students at the School: “Why we do what we do.” The job of everyone who walks out of that school is to help prevent tragedies like that attack from happening again. Those students would have a place in the questioning related to the Twin Towers attacks because they belong directly to the aftermath.
If you were an investigator assigned to piece together the most complete story possible of the events on September 11, you would need to use a technique that Gregory Hartley calls “forward and backward pass” in How to Spot a Liar. Although he looks at the technique with lie-detection in mind, it’s also valuable to help an eyewitness remember more details of an event and to cross-check facts about what has already been said about the event.
For most people, memory tends to be linear. The forward and backward pass uses questioning that is not chronologically organized to get people to remember events differently. New details may come out of that style of questioning. Sometimes, the act of jumping around in time surfaces discrepancies as well. These may be lies, or they just may reflect confusion—that is, the person thought for sure he knew what happened, but when he doesn’t tell the story in precise, chronological order, his memory of the events may differ.
In questioning a person on the street near the World Trade Center at the moment when the first aircraft impacted the building, you might start with, “What did you observe?” Even though the answer might seem extremely comprehensive about the sounds and smoke and screams, she may completely omit observations of what happened on the street around her. It may not be until you jump forward 10 minutes that she remembers that, immediately after impact, two police offers rushed toward the building rather than away from it.
When pressed to remember things out of sequence, our brains tend to work differently. It’s possible to recall things we overlooked previously, long after an event, if it’s viewed outside a strict chronological context.
In addition to the forward and backward pass, law enforcement and other types of investigators might also use something like the Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) to examine answers closely. Developed by Avinoam Sapir, formerly with the Mossad, SCAN is a technique for analyzing what people say. It might be used to detect gaps in information or whether someone has given true or false information. In theory, the frequency with which words are used as well as word constructs differ, depending on whether someone is a perpetrator or a victim, for example. Perpetrators and victims would have different ways to describe events in time. Used as an adjunct to other questioning and analysis techniques, your ability to get a complete and correct story should increase with SCAN. (I’ll look more closely at Sapir’s work in Chapter 6 on analyzing answers.)
Events can run from routine to sacred to once-in-a-lifetime. The emotion associated with the event will, to a great extent, impact whether or not it’s remembered. That emotion can affect how it is remembered as well (which is another topic explored in Chapter 6).
You’ll probably touch on all discovery areas in the course of questioning, even though you will lead with one area. For example, the ELS questioning covers all four areas, with the preponderance of facts collected associated with “thing” simply because the ELS is a thing. Some information about people will include those students in intelligence work who train on the device and me, the inventor. Some information about place is Department of Defense schools where it’s used. The event in time is the awarding of a patent for it in 2013.
Here is how you can create a visual reminder of the fact that your discovery will cover more than one area: Draw a square and divide it into four, equal-sized cubes and write People, Places, Things, and Events in the four squares. Now superimpose a square that is the size of one of the blocks over the center of the larger square. You will see there is a little of each of the areas in the superimposed square.
This illustrates that there will be elements of all the discovery areas. But keep in mind that the square in the middle can move around—all discovery areas will not necessarily be equally addressed when you question. If you are questioning about people more than the other areas, the square shifts to people more prominently, yet there will likely be elements of places, things, and time present also.
