Questioning Words (One to Use More, One to Use Less)

Questioning is a vital way of learning about the world and the knowledge and opinions of people around you. The six main open questions you can ask are: when, where, who, why, what, and how and have been immortalised in verse by Kipling. This post will delve into the “Serving-men” and hopefully provide some useful hints and tips on their use.

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. I send them over land and sea, I send them east and west; But after they have worked for me, I give them all a rest. I let them rest from nine till five, For I am busy then, As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea, For they are hungry men. But different folk have different views. I know a person small- She keeps ten million serving-men, Who get no rest at all! She sends'em abroad on her own affairs, From the second she opens her eyes- One million Hows, two million Wheres, And seven million Whys! - Rudyard Kipling
Kipling’s Honest Serving Men (image from Wikimedia)

The Weak Questions

Lets start with the less useful serving men. With a little thought, these should be fairly obvious. They are Who, When and Where. Its not that these are pointless questions, they will generally need to be answered to have a full picture, however while they are technically open questions, they are extremely specific and generally  lead to single sentence answers. Also they generally only need to be asked once per topic. As such they generally work best as bookends to a discussion. Near the start they can establish past events, towards the end they ensure that planning details for future actions are clear.

The Powerful Questions

The other three serving men, What, Why and How are considerably more powerful. There are a couple of reasons for this:

  • They invite more lengthy responses than the weaker questions
  • They are broader in scope than the weaker questions allowing a greater variety of questions to be formed from them
  • They can generally be used recursively to probe deeper and deeper into a topic

When used in a scientific or similar endeavour these three questions are all extremely useful. However one of them is extremely dangerous when asking questions of people.

The Trouble with Why

Why is often an excellent question to ask. It is the basis of may a fine probing question and scientific breakthrough.  Unfortunately it is also a dangerous question in any context where it is being asked of another human. There are several inter-related reasons for this.

First and perhaps most importantly “why?” gets personal fast. When you ask why, people tend to respond with their beliefs about a topic. This can set a frame for the conversation where people are defending their beliefs rather than trying to come up with the correct answers. This can cause people to become defensive, aggressive, evasive or even to just plain lie as they try to defend their beliefs.  Recent research suggests that calling people’s beliefs into question may even change their mode of thinking in ways which make them less likely to cooperate.

Another problem is that the way “why ” gets used in a lot of contexts means that most people associate it with accusations. “Why did you do that?” or “Why did you not do that?” are common questions and are rarely used in a neutral manner. Most people therefore are primed to be wary around why questions.

Compounding these problems is one of the traits that gives “why” its power. It can and often is used recursively. No matter what answer someone provides, you can generally ask why about that answer too. The problem with this is that this recursive questioning generally goes deeper into people’s belief system where it is less malleable. And worst of all it may eventually reach a level where the person has either not rationally considered their beliefs or has a contradiction in their beliefs. The response to this is likely to be unhelpful.

Rephrasing to Avoid Why

Fortunately our other two power questions, what and how, do not generally suffer from the overly personal nature of why. Therefore almost all why questions can be rephrased to make them less confrontational and therefore improve our chances of getting a useful answer. Lets consider a couple of examples:

“Why did the accident occur?” could be rephrased as “How did the accident occur?” or “What caused the accident?”

“Why are you behind schedule?” can changes to “What caused the schedule slippage?” or “How has the work got behind schedule?”

Note how the rephrased questions are less personal. They are asking for facts not opinions. Its important when using this technique to keep the questions impersonal probing the facts not the person. Consider:

“Why is your price so high?” Could be rephrased as “How does this cost so much?” or “How can you justify this price?” but only one of these avoids turning the question back into a personal one.

The Power of How

So both what and how are likely to be more effective questioning tools than why. However the real power of how is evident when it comes to negotiating and finalising agreement. In this context how prompts people to articulate their plan rather than simply commit to something without considering if they can do it.

Suppose you are negotiating the delivery of a project. Contrast the different responses you are likely to get from asking “Will it be ready by Friday?”, “What will be ready by Friday?” and “How will it be ready by Friday?”. Only the last of these is likely to elicit a plan. Of course once you get down to allocating responsibilities some of the how questions may get more personal again, but “How will you get this done in time” is still less threatening and more likely to get a good response than “What makes you think you can do it in time” or “Why do you think you can have it done by then”. How invites a plan rather than demanding justification.

Another key use of how is to apply it to yourself before giving commitments to do things. If you can’t explain how you would do something, it may be unwise to give a blind assurance that you can. Likewise if someone makes an unreasonable request of you, you can respond by asking them how they think you could do that.

Summary

Hopefully I have persuaded you to use “how?” a little more and “why?” a little less. That being said the takeaways from this post are hopefully.

  • Try to rephrase why questions as how or what questions, bonus points if you can prevent them becoming personal
  • Always ask HOW something is going to get done before agreeing THAT it is going to get done. This applies both to tasks assigned to others and tasks assigned to you

And finally a recommendation. If you want to learn more about effective questioning and negotiation, try “Never Split The Difference” by Chris Voss

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