Thinking Lab · 2 lessons
Questioning
Ask better questions The quality of an answer is capped by the quality of the question. Most bad answers are correct answers to a poor question.
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Ask better questions
In one line: Get better answers by asking a different question, not by thinking harder about the one you were given.
When you need it
- A conversation keeps circling and nobody has defined the word at the centre of it.
- You are being sold a choice between exactly two things.
- You want to find the assumption without accusing anyone of making one.
The common misreading
- What people think
- Good questions are clever ones.
- What is true instead
- The highest-yield questions are almost boring: what would that look like, how would we know, what would change your mind.
After this module you can move a stuck conversation by asking what “working” would look like.
The key idea
The quality of an answer is capped by the quality of the question. Most bad answers are correct answers to a poor question.
Start with a hard question
About work, money, a relationship, or a plan. You do not have to answer it yet. Write the question.
What question are you avoiding asking, because you suspect the answer?
Answer it before reading the lessons — then again after, and notice what changed.
The lessons
- Kinds of question, and what each one gets you — Ask what "working" would look like. A surprising number of disputes dissolve at that question. (6 min)
- Questions that surface assumptions — "What would I expect to see if I were wrong?" is the highest-yield question in this whole section. (6 min)
Practise it
Short exercises. Under each is what a considered answer tends to contain — not a mark scheme.
Five better questions
Someone says "the project failed". Write five questions that would get you somewhere useful, in the order you would ask them.
- Tends to contain: A clarifying question first — what failed means
- Tends to contain: Questions about what was expected
- Tends to contain: At least one that could exonerate the obvious culprit
- Tends to contain: None that assume the answer
The question behind the question
"Should I learn Python or JavaScript?" What is the real question, and what would you need to know to answer it?
- Tends to contain: The real question is about a destination, not a language
- Tends to contain: What they want to build or do
- Tends to contain: Constraints of time and context
- Tends to contain: Either answer is fine for most destinations
Reflect
Which question, asked this week, changed what you did next?
Methods for this
- Observation, feeling, need, request — Saying a difficult thing in a way that can be heard.
- Make it safe first — Noticing when a conversation has stopped being safe, and repairing it before continuing.
- Socratic questioning — Testing a definition or belief by following its consequences until something breaks.