Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change

CHAPTER 5

THE GENTLE INTERROGATOR

Bridging Questions

WHEN I CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW, most of the time guests show up willingly, even happily. They want to make their point, tell their story, or sell their book. They want to speak to the wider world and share their thoughts or experiences. Certainly that’s true for guests who go on Terry Gross’s show. She offers an audience in the millions. People make appointments to see Betty Pristera so she can question their inner selves and peel back their defenses. They want her help. But what about people who do not want to connect? How do you build bridges to people who are suspicious or distrustful, resentful or worse? What happens when someone you want to draw out doesn’t want to talk? Reaching out to the suspicious or wary requires a special touch, extra patience, and bridge-building questions designed to establish a relationship and build trust with someone who may not be receptive.

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You may be looking for a specific piece of information. Why is the new guy hovering in the office? You may want an explanation from a person who would rather not share it. Is your teen planning a party when you are out of town? Your approach to the “person of interest” in these conversations can become a delicate dance. But your chances of getting someone to talk will be improved if you ask the right questions in the right way—if you build bridges. You need to know:

What’s going on?

What are they thinking?

Do we have a problem?

People have a lot of reasons to shut down. They may be hiding or ashamed of something. They may be suspicious of you because of your position or your history together. They may be hostile, aggrieved, or convinced that the world is against them. They may be secretive by nature. Or they may just be up to no good.

Bridging questions are intended to encourage people to talk when they don’t want to. They coax information, glean detail, and assess intent and capability. They are intended for the colleague, the customer, the neighbor, the parent, the child—the suspect—who shuts down, harbors a grudge, or is thinking of doing things he or she should not do.

Bridging questions are a calculated and clever way to get people to tell you things. Sometimes I have used this approach unconsciously, when I interviewed people who were glued to their talking points, suspicious of the media, or caught up in scandal or wrongdoing. All of them were on edge, defenses raised. Few were inclined to offer information willingly. So I needed to wend my way to the relevant parts. I needed to make it easier for them to speak, holding back on the central point or toughest question until we had built a certain rapport and the moment was right. If I’d understood more about this line of inquiry—and the research that’s gone into it—I might have gotten a few more scoops and stories out of those interviews.

The principles behind bridging questions support a specific and clear outcome: getting a closed person to open up. Your prospects are enhanced if you:

Know what you’re after. Be clear about what you want to pursue and the nature of the problem. Have a focus and a destination in mind.

Avoid triggers. Don’t start with accusations or questions that prompt defensiveness. Go instead for conversation. You want to open a channel of communication. You’re in this for the long haul.

Don’t accuse, ask. Start with the person’s grievance and inquire about it. What’s wrong? What’s unfair? Then ask about rationale and motivations.

Affirm and validate. Walking someone across a bridge takes them farther than pushing them off a cliff. You want answers, background, and insight, so you want to encourage discussion. Guide and affirm. Offer rewards. Look for small ways to move across the bridge. The main thing is to get your subject talking. Be patient. This may take a while.

Get Them Talking

In this chapter, I introduce you to someone whose experience, insight, and work offer a travel guide to the toughest and most reluctant human terrain. He teaches how to question the most vexing characters. Though the examples he offers are extreme, the tactics are not. If you’ve ever tried to get answers from someone who won’t open up or who you think is harboring secrets or sitting on some bad stuff, you know how important these questions can be.

What motivates you?

What are you thinking?

Are you dangerous?

Barry Spodak is an expert in threat assessment. He has studied people who keep the darkest, most dangerous secrets. He knows how to talk to them and he has developed protocols for questioning them and building bridges so they will open up, even a little. He wants to get them to reveal their thoughts and intentions so he can determine whether they are on “a path to violence.” But what Barry has learned on the fringes can be applied to the mainstream. His tools can be put to work in everyday places.

Barry and I have known one another for years. His gentle demeanor belies his work on the dark side of humanity. Barry trains FBI and Secret Service agents and U.S. Marshals in questioning potential serial killers, terrorists, or would-be presidential assassins before they act. Sometimes he dresses up—beard, tattoos, earrings—to give his agent-students a living, breathing suspect so they can role-play the conversation. Barry can be a white supremacist, a Middle Eastern arms merchant, or a Christian or Muslim extremist. His disguises would make his favorite Hollywood makeup artist proud.

To Barry, everyone is a puzzle. Some people are just more complex, more mysterious, and more urgent to put together than others. He’s been drawn to them all his life, dramatically discovering this line of work when he was a young graduate student in Washington, D.C., in the late 1970s. His focus was on violent criminals who had been declared not guilty by reason of insanity. His studies involved fieldwork at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital—in its day, one of the premier psychiatric facilities in the country. To get locked up in a psych ward, someone had to be judged a danger to themselves or others. The challenge was how to determine if someone actually posed a threat. There was little research at the time, so psychologists and law enforcement alike struggled for a consistent approach to threat assessment.

Barry’s responsibilities at St Elizabeth’s included leading group therapy sessions. One day, a newcomer joined the group. He sat off to the side, watching, listening, but seldom participating. He seemed subdued, quiet, and innocuous enough. He had no previous history of mental illness. There was no outward indication that he posed a threat to anyone. Yet everyone knew the stark reality: He had tried to kill the president of the United States.

John Hinckley Jr. had pulled the trigger six times on his .22 caliber revolver outside the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981, as President Ronald Reagan exited the building and made his way to the motorcade. The first bullet went into the head of White House Press Secretary James Brady. The second struck police officer Thomas Delahanty in the back of the neck. The third hit the window of a building across the street. Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr pushed Reagan into the limousine as a fourth bullet hit Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy in the abdomen as he spread his body over Reagan. The fifth hit the side of the limousine. The sixth bullet ricocheted off the limousine and hit the president under his left arm and entered his body, lodging in his lung, one inch from his heart. The president nearly died as a result of a staph infection that followed.

Hinckley had been obsessed with the actress Jodie Foster. He had stalked her when she was at Yale. He thought killing the president would get her attention and impress her. A jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He was twenty-six years old when he joined Barry’s group therapy session for the first time.

In therapy, Hinckley said little. On occasion he would mention something about life inside the institution or about other patients or the staff. Barry recalled that Hinckley seemed scared of the other patients; he didn’t talk much to anyone in the early days. Barry tried to draw him out.

What was he thinking?

Could he be reached?

Off to the side, in one-on-one conversations, Hinckley offered a few words and opened up just a little. “He would talk to me after group therapy,” Barry recalled. “Hinckley thought we were about the same age so he didn’t feel threatened by me.” It’s not hard to see why. Barry is soft spoken, his voice gentle and mellifluous. He listens with his eyes. He used those attributes to slowly develop some rapport with the young man who nearly killed a president.

“I was able to sit with him outside the building and I got a little of his history and was able to better elicit his story of how he came to do what he did.” Barry won’t provide details out of respect for Hinckley’s privacy, but he learned that a deliberate, respectful process of asking and providing a sympathetic ear could prompt a would-be assassin to talk.

Solving Puzzles

Over the years, Barry built on his fascination with human puzzles. He developed protocols and practices for how to talk to and question potential assassins, terrorists, school shooters, and disgruntled employees. He became an expert in threat assessment. His approach is proactive and his purpose is clear: Talk to people before they act and elicit information to determine whether they are on a path to violence. He teaches what to ask, when to respond, and how to listen.

It’s worth pointing out that Barry’s methods do not involve the good-cop, bad-cop approach you see in the movies, where one interrogator intimidates and threatens while the other offers the sympathetic ear. He does not teach in-your-face screaming, where a questioner tries to frighten or intimidate someone into opening up. And he has nothing to do with “enhanced interrogation” of the sort Americans used in Afghanistan and Iraq, intended to crush the spirit and force the subject to talk.

Barry teaches “rights respecting” questioning, which most experts say is the most effective way to get a hostile person to open up. His objective is to lower a person’s defenses and move his or her brain out of red alert territory. His questions are framed to generate conversation, however halting, as a means of establishing trust and building a dynamic that will coax information from the most reticent personalities.

Strip away the prime-time drama from Barry’s characters and you have a screenplay that might feature your family, your friends, or your workplace. Someone is keeping a secret. Someone is plotting. Someone isn’t telling you what you need to know. If you can use bridging questions in the right way, you can get people to talk, draw them out, and get a picture of the path they are traveling. Step one is to ratchet down the tension.

Barry adheres to a psychological theory, developed by Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, that posits two “systems” in which the human brain operates. System One is a sort of low gear; it goes anywhere and allows us to make decisions easily and come up with ready answers. Consider it your brain’s autopilot. It goes on when your surroundings and reference points are familiar. If someone asks you what’s two plus two, you answer “four” automatically, without effort. It takes no effort to come up with the answer. In System One, which Kahneman calls “cognitive ease,” we feel relaxed, comfortable, and in control. A questioner might put someone in System One by asking about the weather or an article of clothing, or even by offering a cup of coffee. A warm and familiar gesture, the coffee becomes a reassuring prop.

System Two triggers the brain’s overdrive, making it spin faster, work harder, and use more oxygen. System Two is a response to the unfamiliar, the complex, the difficult or frightening. A tough math problem or contentious situation can put us in this state. You stop, react, scramble for a response.

A brain in System Two is on alert, with its guard up. Unfamiliar or unfriendly surroundings can shift the mind into this gear. We begin watching every word we say. What’s four hundred thirty-five divided by nine? Did you take my bottle of gin?

System Two is likely the state your teen is in if he thinks you are accusing or judging him. It’s the state you are in if your boss gives you a harsh performance review. It’s how just about every suspect is reacting during questioning.

Barry teaches agents how to put their subjects’ brains in System One, into low gear, as much as possible. He tells his students to start with questions the interviewee is comfortable addressing, even if the questions are not relevant to the issue at hand. Ask about a common experience or a part of the interviewee’s life that is known and not controversial.

Suppose an agent is paying a visit to Joseph, whose name surfaced in an investigation. For now, Joseph is being treated as a source, not a suspect. Walking into the living room, the agent notices a piece of art on the wall.

Nice painting, who did that?

Assuming the agent is not there to talk about art theft, the question may serve as an icebreaker—an acknowledgment, even a compliment. The focus on the art lets Joseph speak about something familiar, on his own turf. The agent should listen closely, Barry counsels, and if she hears Joseph open up, she should ask some more about the painting to generate a few minutes of easy conversation, to move Joseph’s brain back to cognitive ease.

Those of us who aren’t federal agents use this method in conversation, consciously or not. We use icebreakers to introduce ourselves, to establish a rapport, to launch conversation with interesting small talk.

Imagine that you’re a manager in an insurance firm. Anna, one of your employees, comes to your office for her annual review. A couple of coworkers have complained about disparaging remarks she has made behind people’s backs. You want her to stop, but you need to know what she’s got on her mind in case it points to a deeper problem. She’s on guard. You recall seeing a new computer on her desk. You ask:

How’s the new computer working out?

“It’s really fast,” she says. “This one doesn’t crash. And it’s about time. That upgrade was long overdue.”

It’s not much, but you’ve got Anna talking.

“That’s great,” you say. “Don’t you love that touch screen?” You can see Anna’s shoulders release from their defensive shrug. She’s not exactly happy to be with you, but at least you’ve established that she likes her new computer.

You’re busy, and you need to move Anna toward the issue that has come to your attention. But take your time, Barry advises. Don’t kick her into System Two with direct questions just yet. Stay with the computer angle for a minute.

How did you decide on that computer?

This question is intended to evoke a different kind of answer. “How” questions ask for explanation and background. They encourage stories. Barry tells his FBI and Secret Service students to understand that the human brain is wired for stories. It’s how we learn and how we remember. It’s how we engage and pass along our experience and our history. Cave paintings were stories. The Bible and the Quran and the Torah tell stories. We put our kids to bed telling stories. Alibis and confessions are stories.

If Barry were Anna’s boss, he would play off her comments and ask:

Do most people choose that computer? Is it a popular choice?

He is listening hard for “entry points” to turn the conversation with Anna to the story he wants to hear.

Yes, she might say, most people select that model. She read extensively about her computer before choosing it. That’s how she does all her work, thoroughly and diligently. Here’s where her story offers an entry point.

“I use my computer differently,” she says. “That’s what makes me more effective in my work. More than Al up in accounts payable who has the other model.”

Anna is now “differentiating” herself, Barry explains. By comparing herself to Al in accounts payable, Anna is offering a clue that an astute questioner can pick up on. Something sets her apart. This provides an entry point. Barry would ask about that.

Really? What’s going on with Al?

Anna might start to describe how her coworker handled a situation recently and how other people weighed in and what happened. As she tells the story, she provides more entry points, more opportunities to ask.

Catching the entry points requires focused listening to form follow-up questions that move the story along and elicit details. You can recognize an entry point by actively listening for an observation or a complaint that resonates with the story you’re after. A flash of anger or an expression of regret can be an entry point. Use it to your advantage. In essence, you are conducting a sort of interrogational game of chess, hearing answers, forming questions, but thinking several moves ahead. So you ask strategically. You know where you want the conversation to go, but you need your opponent to make the moves that get there. Your questions are only as good as the answers they provoke.

Affirm and Acknowledge

To keep his subjects talking, on track, and in System One, Barry uses periodic “micro-affirmations.” When he hears something relevant or that he wants to learn more about, he signals his interest in almost imperceptible movements, gestures, or sounds. He might lean forward and offer a slight nod or a barely audible “uh-huh.” These micro-affirmations reinforce without interrupting or distracting. They signal that Barry is engaged and sympathetic. “One of the things we keep in mind,” Barry says, “is that people who are angry rarely find others who listen.” A questioner who listens provides a welcome refuge.

As the conversation unwinds, Barry also offers “rewards” or a brief acknowledgement. “That’s really interesting,” he will say. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” or “That’s a good point.” Citing neuroscience research and his own experience, Barry told me that when you give people something, they are inclined to give something back. “I try to give them words back that make them feel that I am really appreciative of their intellect or their insight or whatever they need to hear. That will be the reward.”

Questions Without Question Marks

This book is all about asking. But as we’ve seen, some questions work best when they don’t end in a question mark.

Tell me more.

Explain that to me.

These command-questions serve as open-ended invitations for a subject to pause, reflect, and provide more detail. I think of them as questions without question marks. They ask without asking. They convey interest and, when stated in the right tone, accompanied by open body language, they offer affirmation and validation, which Barry says is so important to reduce barriers and generate cognitive ease. Questions without question marks can feel less threatening, less like an interrogation.

In my interviewing, I have found that this technique provides breathing space for the other person, a break from the usual Q&A pattern. I put my pen down, lean forward, and knit my brow in what I intend to be a visibly curious expression. It’s my way of saying I’m hooked, fascinated by what I’m hearing. I want my companion to know that I am not just a good audience, but a rapt listener. I might say:

Go on.

That’s remarkable.

Fascinating.

Barry counsels his agents to turn questions into statements whenever they can. The technique encourages conversation, especially if someone is trying to conceal something. He offers a real-world scenario: The feds have intercepted a long, rambling email from a man who calls himself Lucas. The email vents at the government, rails at Washington, and then, in thinly disguised language, threatens the president. Agents track Lucas down and bring him in for questioning. He is angry, curt, and agitated. Though he has no criminal record, his comments on his social media accounts suggest a disgruntled, antigovernment loner.

Barry would not start by asking, “Why have you been sending threatening emails?” Nor would he ask, “Do you intend to kill the president?” These questions would only shut Lucas down. Instead, Barry asks one of his questions without a question mark. He says:

It sounds like some of the things the president has done have really gotten you annoyed.

Lucas sits up. “Annoyed? Are you kidding? Of course. I’m annoyed … I’m more than annoyed.”

Barry listens intently. He wants Lucas to feel he’s being heard. Like a hostage negotiator, he wants to keep the conversation going, thinking ahead, moving in on the issues. He zeros in on what’s bothering Lucas and poses another question without a question mark:

A lot of people agree with you. (Pause.) Tell me about that.

“Well, of course people agree with me. They’re angry! The guy is ruining the country. And I’ll tell you how he’s doing it …” Now Lucas is on a roll. He’s telling a story.

Angry, alienated people may believe they see and understand things that others do not. By saying, “A lot of people agree with you,” Barry offers Lucas a measure of validation. Not an endorsement of his point of view, but the recognition that Lucas has company. Barry avoids showing disapproval or disagreement. He “normalizes” the conversation, creating the appearance that he understands, along with the hint that he may even be an ally.

I hope you don’t encounter Lucas. But you can use these “questions without question marks” in almost any conversation with someone who is reluctant to speak or hesitant to provide more than a cursory response. These questions offer affirmation. They suggest the questioner is a receptive audience. They serve to promote dialogue that will lead to more entry points to explore.

Echo Questions

I use another kind of affirmation that fully embraces its question mark. I call them “echo questions.” I ask them in almost every type of interview because they are so clear and effective. They almost always prompt the interviewee to talk more and go deeper. These, too, are effective bridgebuilding questions. Echo questions enable me to use the other person’s own words for emphasis and as a follow-up question. I add inflection to suit the mood—sympathy, surprise, and humor.

Henry says, “The way they treated me just made me want to scream.”

You ask your echo question. “Scream?”

Rita says, “I don’t know why I even try anymore. They are so incompetent.”

You say, “Incompetent?”

In most cases, those one-word echo questions will lead to more detail and explanation.

Your six-year-old comes home from school with a note from the teacher saying your child swiped a banana from a classmate at lunch. You ask what happened.

“The lunch room was really noisy and Katie was being mean. So I took her banana.”

Echo question: “You took it?”

“Yes, I took it. But I didn’t steal it, I just took it. She was saying bad things about me and I didn’t like it.”

Life is simple at six. Now you have a teachable moment. You can explain that we don’t “take” things from other people’s lunch trays, even if we’re annoyed at them.

Barry teaches this technique as part of what he calls “reflective listening.” He tells his agent-students they must be fully present if they are going to catch these comments on the fly. And in threat assessment, the stakes are huge.

Back to “Lucas” and his threatening emails. He wrote, “The president is ruining the country.” Lucas says it again in his interview. Upon hearing the words, an astute agent echoes them back.

Ruining the country?

“Yes! Ruining the country. He’s letting in the wrong kind of people; they’re stealing our money and taking away our freedoms. Something’s got to be done!”

The next question acknowledges the burden of Lucas’s insight. It affirms and then echoes his last point.

This must be tough for you to live with.

Do you have ideas about what should be done?

Because the questioner is trying to determine whether Lucas is on a path to violence, this exchange could be a critical turning point in the conversation. Lucas might reveal what he’s thinks should be done, whether he knows other people who feel the same way, maybe even whether he’s prepared to take action himself.

Echo questions and reflective listening leverage the words you hear to extract more of the thinking behind them. They serve as punctuation points in questioning to seize a moment or a thought, highlight it, and invite additional detail and discussion.

Build the Bridge

Bridge-building questions work best when people are at cognitive ease and feel they have a receptive audience. You can achieve this effect with questions (with or without question marks) by making use of words or expressions you have just heard, by listening for entry points, and by careful affirmation of difficult or irrational thoughts. You build the bridge, one piece, one question at a time. You plot a deliberate, careful course, knowing that this bridge will take time to construct and that there will likely be setbacks along the way.