The Way You Ask Questions is Important

Asking good questions is one of the most valuable skill you can have. A good use of it makes you able to learn much more and much quicker. 

Beginner’s Mind

Before we dive into questions themselves, let’s discuss an important concept that I’ve learned about – Beginner’s Mind. It comes from Zen and it is the idea to approach everything as if you don’t know anything about it, as if you see it for the first time. That way, you approach each situation with curiosity and the desire to know more, to understand the circumstances. Even if you’ve heard about a concept 100 times, approaching it with a beginner’s mind allows you to be receptive and to deepen your knowledge. However, if you come in thinking that you know everything, you won’t learn much. Most likely you’re not even going to listen, but rather judge the person speaking, as “you know everything already”. You may even consider the chat a waste of time. 

As you’ve probably realised by now, when listening and asking questions, it’s very useful to be in the Beginner’s Mindset. That way you can more easily actively listen to what the other person is saying. Active listening is not just hearing what the person is saying, but actually feeling it, understanding where he’s coming from, empathising with him. Once you’re in that state, asking good questions is actually quite easy. 

Questions

There are hundreds of ways you can ask a question, but it falls into two categories – closed and open. Closed questions are the ones that ask for a yes or no answer. Some examples are “is that right?”, “would you like to buy this product?”, “that’s cool, right?”. They’re usually used to clarify whether you heard something right, to get a clear answer – yes or no. With this type of question, you may get the answer you want, but not necessarily the information with it. 

Open questions, on the contrary, are the powerful ones. They’re the ones that don’t have an inherent answer, for example, questions beginning with What, Why, How, etc. They let you learn more about things you don’t know. A simple question of “Why?” may uncover the reasons why a person acts in a certain way. Once you know that, you now better understand him and are more able to solve his problem (if that’s what you’re after). To get to the root cause of something there’s a technique called 5 Whys. The way it works is after each answer you ask “why?” again. It may sound silly, but after 5 answers you’ll probably go to the very roots of the person’s reasoning. 

Open questions can be used to understand our friends and hold genuine conversations as well. It’s much more helpful to ask “How are you feeling?” (open questions) vs “You’re feeling good, right?” (closed question). The first one is much more sincere and opens up space for a conversation, while the second one shows that you’re not interested. 

Questions are a powerful tool, that can help you understand people and the world in a much clearer fashion. It uncovers people’s biases, beliefs and may help you to change your worldview in the process.