Questions, a precious tool to be used with the right technique

Article by Diego Ingrassia – “ QUESTIONS, A PRECIOUS TOOL TO USE WITH THE RIGHT TECHNIQUE” – WORLD TRAINING – MAY 2018_HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Karl Popper, referring to school, said: ‘Questions without answers, answers without questions’, a bitter remark that nevertheless effectively sums up the experience that many of us have known at school, a one-way communication, little inclined to listening, within a system built to provide pre-packaged answers that tends to anaesthetise the spontaneous and vital curiosity of children.

Questions are the first and fundamental tool of every ‘knowledge explorer’, but they are also the indispensable premise for building a constructive and effective relationship based on mutual recognition. They are the easiest way to show that we are really listening and motivated to make contact: a well-posed question gratifies our interlocutor, puts him at the centre of our attention.

Silence is also an answer, but it is not always the one we wish to obtain. Every question that we know how to ask with the right method is instead an arrow that hits the centre of the target: it respects the right time, framing, without useless dispersion, the real topics of interest. How often, listening to a conversation, do we happen to notice that the person asking the question does not take the opportunity to pick up on important, particularly significant words spoken by his interlocutor. Valuable information, words that would help improve the quality of the dialogue, are thus lost, often replaced by useless digressions. On the other hand, a consciously asked question, capable of showing true attention to the other person, generates mutual interest, ‘builds bridges’, creates the conditions to transform an ordinary conversation into an important opportunity to meet.
It is important to try to clarify the words we exchange rather than interpret them. The same word in fact, beyond the culturally shared semantics, can have a different emotional and cognitive meaning for each of us. The system of values, emotions and motivations that move people’s actions is intimately linked to the deep meaning we attribute to words; being able to discover all this helps to avoid insidious misunderstandings and contributes to widening the possibilities of a healthy and constructive confrontation. Every question asked spontaneously is useful to better understand ‘the other’, but for a question to become a ‘strategic question’, it is necessary to acquire competence on the different types of questions. Having a method, a technique, makes it possible to develop an adequate competence: knowing when to use a question for ‘exploratory’ purposes, with the aim of expanding the information and knowledge exchanged, and when to ‘tighten up’, with the intention of verifying the level of mutual understanding. It is important to learn to assess the time dimension: some questions are ineffective because they are asked too early or too late, and finally to choose words carefully to be in tune with the values at stake.
The ‘Advanced Questioning Technique’ (TAD) is a tool designed to generate the right level of awareness; it also amplifies our dialectical skills, helps us to achieve a more open and profound dialogue in the service of empathy and relational sensitivity, skills that prove invaluable in negotiation, therapy and forensics. ‘To ask is lawful, to answer is courteous’ goes a famous proverb. But we can unhinge this mechanism: through an attitude that is both sensitive and strategic in asking questions, we can persuade our interlocutor to open the door of the relationship to us.

Every question dropped equals a missed opportunity for communicative exchange with our interlocutor. An opinion shared by Jostein Gaarder in his book Hello?, when he states: “An answer is the stretch of road you have left behind. Only a question can point beyond it’. Mastering a proper technique and using it ethically and professionally makes us competent and effective people in the world of relationships.

‘Know thyself’ is the path Socrates pointed out for wisdom. But to know oneself, it is necessary to learn to know others, to understand their value, to accept their diversity and all the complexity that comes with it. Questions are a valuable and powerful tool in this direction.