A Trick for asking Open-Ended Questions

I’ve always been aware that open-ended questions are good. They allow someone to answer from their perspective and context rather than being constrained to the limitations imposed by your yes/no options. They also allow someone to challenge an assumption or idea (“How do I look in this dress?”) in a way that is potentially less confrontational (“Does this dress make me look fat?”).

All that said, even after some training in “better questions”, I often find myself regressing back to the good old yes/no in conversations – usually without even being aware of it. That is, until I went on some awesome Agile Facilitation training recently where we learnt a really useful trick:
1. Assume the answer to your question is “yes” (Do we have anything to share with the other teams?)
2. Ask the follow-up question (What will we be sharing with the other teams?)

Ta-da: easy peasy open-ended question! And, if you’re worried about the fact that the answer to your yes/no question may actually be no, if you think about it “no one” or “nothing” are both valid responses to an open-ended question.

I still ask yes/no questions. I am trying very hard not to (especially when facilitating). This trick seems to have helped me become better at self-correcting and gives me an easy way to figure what I can ask instead.

This trick has helped me immensely. Give it a try. Let me know what you discover.

Advertisement