CHAPTER 1
Asking Powerful Questions
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
— Albert Einstein
Eighteen months. That is the age, according to psychologists, at which children start to seek information. At the age of about 36 months, this fledgling curiosity translates into verbal questions. The questions can seem countless and random, darting from one topic to the next seemingly indiscriminately. Why does it rain? What is the moon made of? How do birds fly? Where did the dog go? When can we go to the park?
By the age of three, we are naturally wired to ask what are known as the 5Ws and H questions: what, when, where, who, why, and how. These are open‐ended questions, meaning that they must be answered with more information than just a simple “yes” or “no.” The 5Ws and H are information‐seeking questions that spark new ideas and inspire conversation. When a child isn't satisfied with a response to a question, they simply keep asking.
How do adults, respond to a child's 5Ws and H questions may help that child's development and accelerate new ways of thinking. Countering a child's question with another question could motivate them to think critically. Responding to the question, for example, of where did the dog go, by saying “Where do you think the dog could be found…?” could stimulate new answers, spark a fresh perspective, or encourage a different exchange.
As children get older, their questions increase in frequency and complexity, indicating growth in their analytical skills. As they mature and develop, they will start to question everything in their daily lives. Anyone who interacts with teenagers regularly may have experienced this greater degree of questioning.
But this insatiable curiosity to learn by questioning often takes a pivot when a child starts grade school. Slowly, the focus of education shifts from asking questions to having answers. A new habit begins to take root as children are asked to raise their hands if they know the answer. This mindset—the expectation to deliver an answer rather than ask more questions—only deepens as young people continue their education journey.
By the time we start working, it is instilled in us that we need to have answers. In the work environment, the value of questioning is frequently, largely, and wrongly overlooked. Answers are championed; solutions are expected; more questions are implicitly discouraged. Consider performance reviews. Leaders rarely allocate much time to highlighting how someone challenges the status quo, opens a new line of thinking, or stimulates a different dialogue. Instead, they focus on outcomes. Yes, results matter, but could those results have been more significant and achieved with less risk through a more intelligent allocation of resources or with a more creative strategy? Too often, we neglect the fact that top performers are the ones who ask questions and activate critical thinking that can expose weaknesses in a strategy or reveal an alternate path.
The path back to our young, inquisitive self is short. In fact, it depends on asking ourselves one question that links our professional and personal lives: How do we grow? This question underpins every project, every request, every meeting, and even where we choose to work and live. It is rarely asked as directly as this, but the answer to this underlying question is what shapes our careers and lives. We grow through questioning. Understanding this point creates the scaffolding that helps determine how to increase personal satisfaction or the company's market share, grow our customer base, help increase product usage, or drive renewals. If you seek growth, you need to stimulate critical thinking. For that, you need powerful questions.
Road to Powerful Questioning
While we are wired from a young age to ask questions, we are rarely taught to develop the skill of questioning effectively. Too often in business, we overlook the importance of questioning. We fail to appreciate questioning as an integral skill necessary for doing our jobs. We don't invest enough time and energy in training ourselves and others to be effective inquisitors.
The foundation of Quantitative Intuition (QI)™ is learning to become a fierce interrogator. The first pillar of QI is precision questioning. In this chapter, we discuss a practical approach to probing an issue by asking a string of questions to rapidly explore a topic while at the same time building and extending your partnership with your stakeholders. When done well, it is a dance, with each partner contributing to the exchange, reading the tempo, adjusting their responses, and supporting the other, resulting in a smooth, fluid movement.
On the surface, you know how to recognize and ask a question. A question, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a sentence expressed to elicit information. Taking this one step further, a question may lead to a hypothesis that you test to ascertain whether that hypothesis is true or needs to be refined. Applying the scientific method leads to a question‐hypothesis‐learning loop that yields new data to analyze. It is a continuous learning cycle. When you get new information, you ask additional questions that may spark new hypotheses that you then test and refine. This cycle enables you to drill down to the root cause and arrive at a conclusion.
Is this the process you use when you take on an assignment at work? Too often, we omit the learning cycle. Instead, the data‐decision journey is viewed as a one‐way street. What is expected is an actionable recommendation supported by compelling conclusions with relevant data, a straight line from point A to B. This is viewed as the most efficient route and the iterative question‐hypothesis‐learning loop is neglected.
Precision Questioning
The oldest and still the most powerful tactic for fostering critical thinking is the Socratic method, developed over 2,400 years ago by Socrates, one of the founders of Western philosophy. The Socratic method uses thought‐provoking question‐and‐answer probing to promote learning. It focuses on generating more questions than answers, where the answers are not a stopping point but the beginning of further analysis. Managers can use this model in a modern‐day organization to create a dialogue among colleagues, clients, or stakeholders. The method is used to find a productive path forward and guide data discovery through a series of steps. These steps include examining an issue, questioning the outcome, and finding true knowledge by applying different types of questions.
One modern‐day version of the Socratic method is precision questioning and precision answering (PQ/PA), which became popular in Silicon Valley. This method was created by Dennis Matthies and Monica Worline, Stanford University educators who taught at the Center for Teaching and Learning. Precision questioning provides its practitioners with a highly structured, one‐question/one‐answer discussion format to help them solve problems or conduct deep analysis.
The way PQ/PA works is that one participant asks a question, and the respondent answers it. The questioner uses that answer to ask a follow‐up question, and so on, until the respondent finally says, “I don't know.” The idea is to answer as many questions as possible before finally reaching the point where the respondent cannot answer the question. The process pushes critical thinking to a deeper level and can elicit new information or analysis.
For example, in our experience, analysts often know more than they are sharing in a typical presentation. They may exclude information not out of an unwillingness to be helpful, but because they over‐index on accuracy. By training and inclination, analysts often focus their attention on the specific, the rational, and the explicable. By asking questions, PQ/PA encourages them and other team members to think more broadly.
The authors of this book have had the opportunity to learn about PQ/PA first‐hand from Matthies. By its nature, it is direct, rapid‐fire, and pointed. The call‐and‐response model is designed to uncover weaknesses in thinking. Precision questioning holds to the ideal of gathering information quickly. When drilling into a topic, the questioner strives to avoid personalization, so the questions are not seen as personal. However, depending on the problem being investigated or the questioner's skill, the method might be alienating in some company cultures. To counter this effect, leaders must foster a more open environment.
To reap the greatest benefits of PQ/PA, leaders should embrace the opportunity to pivot from interrogation to integration. The best leaders do this by fostering a collaborative learning environment where people have the trust to speak openly, share their ideas, and challenge the status quo. The hallmarks of a successful meeting are open‐mindedness, patience, and mutual respect. As a data‐driven leader, your role is to serve as a coach to unlock and integrate the intrinsic knowledge and awareness of each person on your team. This is effectively done through questions.
The Power of Precision Questions
Questioning is a skill. Like other skills such as active listening, time management, or collaboration, it takes training, practice, and application to become proficient. The journey begins with an appreciation for different types of questions. Questions can be broadly classified into four categories:
- Factual Questions: This type of question has straightforward answers based on facts or awareness. These questions can be open or closed. The answers to questions are based on facts but may require an explanation.
- Convergent Questions: These are close‐ended questions with a finite set of answers. Typically, these questions have one correct answer. The most basic convergent question can be answered with a “yes” or “no.” For example, consider Spiderman from Marvel Comics. How did Spiderman get his powers? The answer is clear and specific. He was bitten by a radioactive spider.
- Divergent Questions: These are open‐ended questions that encourage many answers. These questions can best be understood as exploratory—as means for analyzing a situation, problem, or complexity in greater detail and then predicting different outcomes. Frequently the goal is to stimulate creative thought or to expand the conversation. For example, if every petrol station installed multiple fast electric charging stations, how would that change the demand curve for electric vehicles? If you could “fill‐up” your electric car by simply swapping out batteries versus recharging the batteries, how would that change consumers' range anxiety about electric vehicles? (see call‐out box Divergent Questions for a sample of divergence questions)
- Evaluative Questions: This type of question requires deeper levels of thinking. The questions can be open or closed. Evaluative questions elicit analysis at multiple levels and from different perspectives to arrive at newly synthesized information or conclusions. For example, what are the similarities and differences between… ?
Building an Inquisitive Team
One of the best LinkedIn profiles starts with “I am insatiably curious.” What would it take to build a team of insatiably curious, truly inquisitive people? A team that has a thirst for learning? Building an inquisitive culture involves a combination of what and how. The what is a combination of the types of questions previously outlined, and the how is the environment you create. Great leaders create great cultures. There are three basic steps to building an inquisitive culture:
- Start with an open‐ended question.
- Respond, don't react. Embrace silence.
- Ask a stream of questions.
Step 1: Start with an Open‐Ended Question.
Having a good arsenal of questions at one's disposal is a must for any leader, but the one staple of any leader is the open‐ended question. Asking open‐ended questions is like adjusting the lens of a camera, opening the aperture to create a wider field of view. This wider field sets a tone of receptivity, signaling that you are open to new information, in learning mode, and ready for a dialogue not a monologue.
Here are three practical open‐ended ways to start a conversation:
- Help me understand…
- Have you considered…?
- What surprised you?
The simplicity of starting with one of these three‐word statements belies their power. We call these multiplier questions as they are designed to increase the dialogue. Open‐ended questions also serve as a relief valve, reducing the tension of having the correct answer.
“Help me understand” enables you to take a posture of learning and humility. It communicates that I don't know what I don't know. I am hungry to learn.
“Have you considered” puts the power in the other person's hands. It equips them to discuss their assumptions and caveats and share any trade‐offs they may have made. A variation of this, beneficial when providing feedback, is “you may want to consider.” Again, it is up to them to decide whether they want to take action or explore further. You are empowering them.
“What surprised you?” is an open‐ended question designed to reduce bias. The word surprise is a bias killer. We all have biases—preconceived notions. Some are conscious and others are unconscious. The latter is often called “implicit biases,” which the Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University defines as “the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, decisions, and actions in an unconscious manner.”
Without being aware of their influence, implicit biases affect how we interpret and tell a data story. The brain is wired to connect new information to past interpretations to learn quickly. These mental processes naturally introduce bias as we interpret new information. An analyst, as someone who is expected to interpret data rationally and logically, may be hesitant to share data they cannot explain. They may be tempted to label an unexplained result as an outlier and disregard it or relegate it to an appendix. As the leader, you may miss a rich data point or a potential winning solution by not knowing about these outliers. When you ask, “What surprised you?” you are giving your colleagues permission to share what they did not expect to see, what might fall outside of their logical lens. “What surprised you?” creates a trusting, inviting space for an open discussion.
In our experience, asking your analyst the powerful question of “What surprised you?” often leads to two additional beneficial outcomes. First, it releases the analyst from the need to describe their hard work and chronologically go through all of the analysis that they have performed over the past few weeks. It cuts straight to the chase to the interesting findings. Second, by their definition, surprises are likely to be patterns that are not easily explained. Identifying these surprises may help you quickly identify problems with the analysis. What may be a surprise for the analyst who may not be aware of the context may be easily explained by the context‐aware leader.
Step 2: Respond, Don't React. Embrace Silence.
You may have heard the term active listening. It involves paying close attention to words and nonverbal actions and providing feedback to improve mutual understanding. But have you ever stopped to consider passive listening? Passive listening also involves listening closely to the speaker but without reacting. Instead, passive listening leaves space for silence. By combining both of these modes, we achieve what we call effective listening.
Effective listening focuses on two elements of the communication process: silence and responding versus reacting. To create a learning environment built on trust, you need to listen. Listening begins with silence. Because it creates a void, silence may cause some discomfort, but it is an effective way to enhance learning. During the silence, the speaker will fill the void, often revealing more information; hence you learn more. Silence signals that you are fully engaged; you are listening intently, considering what is being shared so you can respond in a meaningful way.
The difference between responding and reacting lies in the level of consideration. Reactions tend to be instinctual, spontaneous impulses driven by emotion without considering the result. Reactions often come without a filter, without much thought or analysis, and without taking time to consider possible implications. Even if a reaction isn't intense or negative, it disrupts communication. For example, a listener may feel the need to share a related story. The intent is positive—to show understanding—but the unintended consequence is to redirect the speaker's attention toward the listener. The listener has shifted the conversation and taken control of the discussion.
Contrast this with responding. A response is thoughtful, logical, and informed. Responding uses your head and your heart to consider the outcomes of a reply before speaking. Responding is thoughtful; it involves taking time and using silence to process new information. Responding is also proactive, using intuition and experience to consider what is optimal for you, for others in the meeting, and for the desired outcome. You can then engage in a way that is accretive to the result you're trying to achieve. In many situations, work or personal, responding versus reacting will yield richer results. You should joyfully embrace it, not only when someone is presenting an idea or information but also when someone asks a question.
Step 3: Ask a Stream of Questions.
One of the most powerful response techniques is the ability to ask questions. Questions frame the issue, remove ambiguity, expose gaps, reduce risk, give permission to engage, enable dialogue, uncover opportunities, and help to pressure‐test logic. Questions that are informed, thoughtful, and relevant advance learning. Varying the questions sustains engagement and fosters creative thinking. The goal of asking questions is not to achieve a single right answer but to accumulate and expand knowledge through the questioning process.
Returning to our camera lens analogy, open‐ended questioning provides a wide‐angle lens. It enables you to capture the broader picture and take in crucial background elements, allowing you to explore the scene with an unrestricted view rather than through a narrower analytical lens.
Of course, this wide view also creates distortion. Open‐ended questions provide much more real estate to work with, but ultimately, we need a sharper picture to make smarter decisions. To quote the famous photojournalist Robert Capa, “If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.” Questions also allow you to narrow the lens, to get closer. By asking a stream of questions and using the different types, you can focus the data picture.
Start with the basics. Your ability to focus starts with developing comfort with the four types of questions—factual, convergent, divergent, and evaluative. This is the question library that equips you with the capacity to ask a stream of questions.
As your progress with the discussion, the secret to asking questions is to be precise. Your questions are still open‐ended but focus on particular aspects of an outcome you are looking to achieve. Start to transition from a broad question—How do we increase sales?—to more precise questions—What specific promotion has had the highest response among older millennials? Did your analysis uncover any variations by gender? Were there surprises in the sales data from a geographic view? How would your conclusion change if you were the competitor? As you consider the new information shared, are you clear on how it relates to the original problem or the outcome you are working toward?
The Smartest Person in the Room
The smartest person in the room is not the one with an answer, but the person asking the best questions. That is the irony. If you seek bolder recommendations, ask better questions. Answers come from the discovery journey. Ask a stream of questions, develop the skill to pivot, dive deep, and come back up. Questioning is analogous to pulling threads on a sweater. Some loose threads will just come out; others, if pulled, can unravel the whole sweater. Questioning enables you to quickly pull threads to see which are superfluous, which are integral, and consequential.
Questioning is a skill worthy of your time to practice and master. It starts with understanding the taxonomy of questions. By being aware of the different types of questions and tapping into their power, you will arrive at better decisions. You will be able to influence strategy by building new connections.
Becoming a robust questioner is also about creating a cooperative process to elicit new learning through a series of questions. Questioning helps your team make inferences and connections about data and open up viewpoints or analysis that is not apparent. This exploration mindset encourages trial and iteration; unexpected solutions originate from the discussion, not data. As a leader, you should strive to create a learning environment that fosters the question‐learning loop.
Building a team of questioners is the path to winning, to achieving the robust growth many companies seek. Modeling and embedding this critical competency in your team's culture will enable team members to quickly navigate the data decision journey to arrive at new answers sparking more ambitious agendas. Your analysts will be better critical thinkers, strengthening creativity, collaboration, and communication across the team. When this kind of interaction is encouraged, you have a robust, healthy, productive culture.
Knowing all this is just the beginning. Now it's time to ask yourself, as a leader, do you reward critical thinking? Is critical thinking part of your leadership behavior? Do you offer training in questioning and critical thinking?
Since all work and no play is boring, we thought we would share how you can effectively use questions in nonwork environments to get to know people at a different level. One of the best‐known question sets is the Proust Questionnaire. It is thoughtful, fun, and concise. The Proust Questionnaire was popularized by Marcel Proust, the French novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.
Key Learnings ‐ Chapter 1
- The smartest person in the room is not the one with an answer, but the person asking the best questions.
- Build an inquisitive team by encouraging asking a series of open‐ended questions.
- Respond rather than react to questions.
- Incorporate the following questions to advance the conversation: “Can you help me understand?”, “Have you considered…?”, and “What surprised you?”
- Develop comfort with the four types of questions—factual, convergent, divergent, and evaluative. Practice asking them on a regular basis.