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

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DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS

Before you can fix a problem, you need to know what it is. Get it right, and you’re on your way. Get it wrong and you face the consequences, and they can be costly. These questions help identify a problem with precision, on several levels, separating the symptoms from the disease. Start broad, zero in. Describe, compare, and quantify. Listen for detail and patterns.

Open-Ended Problem Questions:

What’s going on here?

What’s the matter?

The first step is to ask what’s wrong. Using broad, open-ended questions, ask for a description of the problem—what it looks, sounds and feels like. Ask where it manifests itself, when, and in what ways. Ask about what seems to make the problem better or worse. These are present-tense questions designed to get a full and accurate description of the problem from all angles.

History Taking: When did this problem begin? How has it changed? How does it compare? History repeats itself. Learn from it. Look for comparisons, parallels, patterns. Ask about previous experience with the problem—when it was first detected, how it’s changed over time, what’s been done to address it in the past. Ask whether it’s gotten worse and in what ways. Ask what’s been tried in the past and with what effect. Compare then and now. Use the past to inform the present. These questions use history to seek detail to understand what happened, under what conditions, and with what result.

The Mystery: What are we missing? Now that you know the present and the past, drill deeper and ask what don’t we know. What else could be at work here to cause the problem? Is there a dirty little secret, a hidden agenda, a mistake, or an unintended action that has made the situation worse? Did a shortcut become a short circuit? These are beneath-the-surface questions that ask about miscues, mistakes, and missed signals.

Verification Questions: Are you sure? How do you know? Can you take this information to the bank? Once you have a diagnosis, you want to be sure it’s right. Double-check the sources and know where the information comes from. Determine whether the people you’re relying on have an agenda or an ax to grind. What are their qualifications? What’s their track record? Ask for an explanation about their process and what their conclusion is based on. Consider a second opinion. These are the corroborating questions that help you understand the basis of the diagnosis and give you confidence that it is correct. Now you can deal with it.

Ask Again: In the medical field, clinicians and researchers have created a number of techniques to get patients talking and to describe their condition in detail. By connecting symptoms and patterns to knowledge and experience, a medical professional will be able to diagnose the problem or will order up the right tests to take the next step toward a diagnosis. You can adapt this pattern of questioning—describe, compare, quantify, connect—to virtually any situation where you are trying to determine what’s wrong and why. Ask clearly and persistently, and ask more than once.

Listen: In asking diagnostic questions, listen closely to words used to describe the problem and its symptoms. Key in to details about where and when the problem occurs, and actions that connect to it or seem to cause it. Listen for patterns. Listen for detail and for the connection between the problem and actions that seem to make it better or worse.

Try: Have a conversation with a family member who is not feeling well. Start with open-ended questions and then get more specific. Where does it hurt? Can you quantify it, rate it on a scale of one to ten? Does anything you do make it better? Worse? How does the discomfort compare to previous instances when you felt like this? If you can stay focused and keep asking, you will find it easier to extend your attention span and drill down to determine the cause of a problem.