Questions carry tremendous power. Most people never realize that in our internal dialogue, we constantly ask ourselves one of three questions: (1) What is happening right now? (2) What does it mean? (3) How should I react? As a consequence, all of us are conditioned from a young age to immediately respond to a question as soon as it is asked. The most successful people in life are often masters in the art of asking great questions. The top sales professionals sell more because they first ask questions to uncover motivations and desires before they start their sales pitch. Great corporate leaders such as Richard Branson have conveyed that they surround themselves with people who are smarter than themselves and who lead by asking the right questions. Top scientists first frame their insight gaps in a series of well-formulated questions that guide their attention on these unresolved theoretical conundrums. And in the Creative Process, the best innovators use powerful questions to gain novel insights and ideas, too.

“Creativity always begins with a question. And in both your business and personal lives, the quality of your creativity is determined by the quality of your questions — by the way you frame your approach to circumstances, problems, needs, and opportunities. A creative approach makes life a questioning process,” noted the former Stanford Business Creativity Professors Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers in their book ‘Creativity in Business’. And they are right.

At the start of an innovation project or problem-solving endeavor, you initially frame the situation as a question (starting with the words ‘How to?’). So if you lead a service company that is losing market share to competitors, then you could frame your situation as follows: ‘How to create meaningful novel customer experiences for our service business?’ In addition, in the initial exploration phase of the creative process, powerful questions can help you to dig deeper into your unfamiliar knowledge terrain and to open up perceptual blind spots. Here, great questions lead to novel insights — as the Czech novelist Milan Kundera knew: “I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question to everything.” Questions also play a prominent role in the ideation stage of the creative process when we generate ideas. In fact, most creativity techniques ultimately can be reduced to one unconventional question.

So how can you learn to ask great questions? Here are 8 suggestions to get started:

1. Firstly, become more open-minded and curious. “The important thing is to never stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing,” recommended Albert Einstein. Instead of talking all the time, make it a habit to ask a question and then simply shut up and listen. “The key to wisdom is this — constant and frequent questioning … for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth”, suggested the medieval French philosopher Pierre Abélard.
2. In your notebook, create a place or file wherein you collect great questions for business. Whenever you encounter a new interesting question in an article, in a book, in an interview, or from a consultant, write it down and try it out in your own business environment. An example of a great business question is: If I weren’t already in this business, would I enter it now?
3. Actively encourage your employees to ask questions in every meeting. Even better, charge each of them to bring along one question concerning your business to the next team meeting. Then, go around the table, and be surprised what will come up.
4. Asking Why? at least five times can help you to uncover motives and motivations that are underlying a situation. Here is how you do it: Ask a Why?-question and listen to the answer. Then phrase a new Why?-question using the answer to your first question, and repeat this process at least five times. You will notice that the answers move to higher levels of abstraction, become more conceptual and gain a more global perspective. Example: Q1: Why do you read this column? A1: Because I want to learn more about creativity in business. Q2: Why do you want to learn more about business creativity? A2: Because we need to become an innovation leader. Q3: Why do you need to become an innovation leader? Etc.
5. Another powerful questioning technique is 5W+1H. Asking Why? What? Who? Where? When? How?-questions allows you to systematically explore all the rich details of a situation.
6. In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novel, The Little Prince “had never in his life given up on a question once he had asked it”. So be as persistent as the little prince and repeat the same questions one or two times to get a meaningful answer and uncover the truth. A sales guru confided to me that in most cases, a prospective client’s first answer is usually far away from what’s really on her mind. So keep on probing. Example: Q1: What is the problem you are facing here? Q2: Please tell me what is the problem? Q3: Now what’s really the problem?
7. A variant of the previous process is asking repeatedly “What else?” after getting suggestions to your initial question. Example: Q1: What would be the ideal solution here? Q2: What else? Q3: What else? Etc.
8. Finally: “Ask a dumb question at least once a day. As your excitement in discovery builds, so will your courage to ask dumb questions aloud in public. You’ll soon become adept at knowing a dumb question when you hear it. A dumb question creates explosions, concatenations, cascades of insights” (Ray and Myers). A great example of a dumb question is: What happens if we do nothing?

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2007. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 16 August 2007.