The art of asking great questions in business
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” – Voltaire
For those of us that know that we don’t know all there is to know, it pays to be good at asking questions.
In life it is a good habit to be curious. In business, getting the best answers depends entirely on your ability to ask the right questions. It can be the difference between success and failure.
So how do you ask the right questions?
Here are 10 things to think about:
1) Be clear on your purpose
Know your purpose. Why do you need to ask the questions in the first place? If you’re not sure, don’t ask anything until you are sure; and once you are sure, frame your questions in a way that will get answers that satisfy that need. This will give your questioning much greater focus and purpose, and stop you getting sidetracked into irrelevancies.
2) Know the answers before you ask the questions
As counter-intuitive as this may sound, the best questioning comes when you already have a good idea of what the answer or range of answers must be.
Do your research. Know your stuff. Invest the time to make yourself as much of an expert in the field as you can, so that when you get answers, you understand them, you can spot the truth from the lies, the sense from the nonsense, and the helpful from the ridiculously impractical.
3) Ask the right person
You wouldn’t ask a nuclear scientist for tips about running a marathon, and you wouldn’t ask a weightlifter for an opinion on the best tax structure for a start up. Getting the best answers also involves identifying the right person for the questions you have. The questions you have for a team leader, should be different to the questions you have for the deputy, and different to the questions you have for the assistant.
Find the right person for the questions you have, and tailor your question accordingly.
4) Start at the top, get to the bottom
Start general, and establish a broad picture. This will help ensure that any answer you do get makes sense in the context of the wider issue. Rudyard Kipling’s poem Six Honest Serving Men, reminds us that the essence of a story involves knowing Who, What, Where, Why, How and When.
Once you have the context, then you must get specific. Drill down to the detail. Be persistent. Be focused. Dig, dig and dig some more, til you get to the route of the issue, and you have considered it from every angle possible.
5) If you want opinions, use open questions. If you want facts, use closed ones.
An open question is one that allows the person responding to speak widely without constricting the options: What do you think? Why should we do that? How do you think that will work? This lends itself perfectly for getting opinions.
A closed question is one that restricts the answers that the person can give, often asking for a yes or no answer: Will the job be finished tonight? Who was responsible, Tunde or Sarah? Can you do it at this price?
Use short closed questions to get the raw factual information you need. Whether or not a job has been completed is a yes or no answer. Get that yes or no first (no matter how much the person prevaricates or tries to explain), then once you have the answer (‘no’ very possibly), ask the open question to get their opinion as to why the deadline has been missed.
But beware, that questioning in this way can often feel uncomfortable, even aggressive to the person being questioned, so it is worth considering pre-warning them about your intended method of questioning, that it will be tough, but it’s not an attack on them personally, but an exercise to get the best answers available.
6) Keep your questions short
Long and complex questions are designed to show how clever you are, but they don’t get the answers you need. Make each question focus on a single issue, then move onto the next issue with your next question.
7) Play the devil’s advocate
Playing devil’s advocate is a very useful technique for testing the quality of answers you are getting. By questioning from a different and contrary standpoint, you force the other person to justify their position. It can help to identify weaknesses, problems, improbabilities etc. And even if, at the end of the day, this does not change your view of the matter, it can often help clarify the issues.
8) Listen
No point asking questions if you don’t listen to the answers. Listen, and let the answers guide the questions you follow up with. Don’t feel the need to fill silence with chat. If you find yourself speaking more than the person you are questioning, stop. Let them do the talking. Don’t interrupt, don’t be argumentative. Give them the time and space to respond.
9) Look them in the eye
Asking questions is as much an examination of the person, as an investigation of the issues.
A person may answer yes or no, or may give you an explanation, but whether you will accept the answer as genuine or buy the explanation given, often depends on your perception of the way they have given you the answers.
Look the person in the eye when you ask a question. Watch how they answer as much as what they say. You may not have a degree in body language analysis, but tell tale signs are usually easy to spot, and how much confidence a person has in the answers they give you is usually quite obvious to discern.
10) Get the best answer
Unless your true aim is simply to criticise and destroy (in which you are not really interested in the answers anyway), seek to discover the best answers to your questions.
In business, there is often no single right answer, but a range of possible alternatives. Since the success of your business depends on the decisions you make, which in turn depends on the quality of information at your disposal, the better your information, the better your prospects of making good decisions.
Engage the other person to work with you to find that best answer. Treat the exercise as a joint mission to solve a puzzle, rather than just an interrogation between adversaries. Even if the questioning must be robust and rigorous, you will still find that you get better information, when you actually aim for the best answers, rather than the most convenient or obvious ones.
The art of asking great questions is a critical one to master in business. As motivational guru, Tony Robbins, reminds us:
“Successful people ask better questions and as a result, they get better answers.”
How to answer tough questions when your head is on the block
‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…’ – Rudyard Kipling
The inquiry into disasters and events of great interest to the public has become an increasingly common phenomenon in many countries, particularly in the UK and US, where the House of Commons and Capitol Hill have taken to the role of grand inquisitor with great gusto.
Its primary aim and function is to get to the bottom of the problems leading to the particular disaster. Its secondary aim is to reassure the public that those responsible are being held accountable.
A particular feature of these inquiries is the Question & Answer session that features Chairrmen, CEOs and other leaders hauled before the inquiry body to answer sometimes very tricky questions in an often very hostile environment. In recent times these inquiries have often featured highly wealthy white men in positions of great power and influence being forced to face the wrath of impassioned questioners spurred on by a media hungry for a good headline and a public baying for blood.
Murdoch (BSkyB)
Buckles (G4S)
Hayward (BP)
Diamond (Barclays)
How the mighty are fallen.
How you answer and respond often has a direct and profound impact on the profit and sometimes even the viability of the entire company or organisation, as well your own personal reputation and career.
It’s a tough job, but being able to handle such extreme pressure is a critical quality for anyone in a leadership or managerial capacity.
So here are some tips on how to answer tough questions when your head is on the block and all around you people are losing theirs:
1) Prepare. Prepare. Prepare:
Know your facts. Know the problems. Find the skeletons before they do. The hard work should not come when you are answering the questions but when you are doing your own internal research and investigation to find out what has gone wrong, why, what the implications are and what you can do to remedy it.
In particular, make sure you work out the legal implications of the issues and whatever you plan to say.
Leadership is as much about fire-fighting and problem solving, as it is about great vision and direction-setting so don’t leave it to others to look into the problems. Take a direct and personal interest so that you are certain the root cause of the problems have been identified and if possible resolved.
2) Get the backing of your board:
When the brown stuff hits the fan and it starts getting sprayed around, people naturally duck for cover. No one will say it beforehand, but once the wrath of the questioning becomes apparent and the difficulties laid bare for the world to see, all of sudden the clamour to find a fall-guy or scape-goat becomes deafening. And as the leader, technically, the buck stops with you. To avoid being faced with that untenable position, secure your base before hand.
Before facing the questioning, call a meeting and lay out the issues with your board or senior management/leadership team and a clear plan of how this should be dealt with that involves you remaining at the helm. Get their unequivocal backing, reminding them that things will get tough but it is precisely at such times that unity is critical.
That way, the scope for your team to run for the hills leaving you isolated will be minimised.
3) Have a clear goal:
Much vitriol and abuse will come your way, you have to accept that. But this does not mean that you should have no goals at all.
Work out a clearly defined, limited and specific objective you would like to achieve, particularly from a PR perspective and then focus on achieving this.
So, it may be to prove that a particular allegation of corruption is unfounded; or to simply display that you are personally committed to resolving the problem. You may want to go on the offensive to convince shareholders that you have the fighting spirit needed to get through a tough situation; or you may want to be completely candid to convince the authorities of your intention to coorporate.
The key is to know going in, what you want to have achieved coming out and then keep that in your head and stick to that, allowing punches to land on anything that does not threaten that goal.
4) Say Sorry passionately
Time was ‘my apologies’ or ‘I regret’ was sufficient to show contrition. But not anymore. Today, unless you specifically say, ‘I’m sorry’ people consider that you have not actually apologised at all.
So, say it, and say it all. Whatever it is that your company or organisation has done or not done. Say ‘I’m sorry’. Follow that up with ‘I apologise’ (to whoever needs the apology) and then express your ‘sincere regret’. It usually costs you nothing, beyond some pride and pride is the first casualty in a situation like this.
Crucially, make be sure to show some passion and sincerity about it.
This can all be done without admitting anything in particular, but the sentiment of sincere apology is crucial to convey because your questioners are secretly hoping for a display of arrogance and aloofness that they can then jump on.
It was the distinct failure of Tony Hayward of BP to show any sincere contrition following the massive oil spill in the US that directly increased the sense of anger and indignation against BP and ultimately led to his losing his job. He came across as cold and uninvolved and this just added fuel to the very large fire that had already flared to the extent that even President Obama weighed in, questioning Tony Hayward’s credibility and capacity to lead BP.
This was also part of Bob Diamond’s problem, where his comments during his previous appearance that the time for ‘apology and remorse’ was over, came back to bite him. His swagger and confidence together with that lack of remorse finally did for him when during the scandal of the LIBOR rate fixing, he seemed unable to show any particular remorse.
A leader has to be able to take the flak, and apologise properly on behalf of the company or organisation, even where he or she is not personally to blame.
5) Give them some red meat
You are faced with a pack of hungry wolves itching to tear you limb from limb, if given half a chance. So what do you do? Pull out a nice juicy steak, throw it to them, and then slip past whilst they scavenge over those scraps.
The wolves have to eat and if you don’t give them something to eat, they’ll eat you.
Even if the questioning is not particularly clever or forensic, at the very least you will have to take some punches.
Your preparation means you should know the problems and the mistakes your company or organisation has made. You know the potentially crippling ones, the moderately serious ones and the fairly minor ones. Pick a moderately serious one, play up its importance, then show absolute and total contrition about this ‘serious failure’ on the part of your company/organisation and show your resolve that nothing like this will ever happen again.
Most recently, Rupert Murdoch showed his mastery of this technique. Before going into the House of Commons Select Committee, he shut down the News of the World organisation, so that by the time he attended, he was able to play up the failings of the News of the World and his absolute regret for what they had gotten up to, knowing that the more the committee focused on that, the more they were stumped by the fact that the organisation had been closed down.
No surprise then that it was his stiff and unemotive son, James Murdoch, that ultimately carried the can, whilst Rupert has continued in post.
6) Push Back on the right things
Just because there have been mistakes and people are angry is no reason to agree with or concede everything that is put to you. Certainly, don’t follow poor Mr Buckles of G4S’s example, who pretty much conceded incompetence and negligence in the space of a few minutes questioning:
Committee: the reputation of the company is in tatters
Buckles: At the moment I would have to agree with you.
Committee: It is a humiliating shambles
Buckles: I could not disagree with you.
Why? Why would you admit any of those things, which are not statements of fact but merely emotive playing to the gallery by the questioner?
At the same time, you must ensure to push back on the right things and not on points that make you look ridiculous:
Buckles: The question I was asked was ‘fluent English’. That was a question I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know what fluent English was.
Committee: What do you think fluent English is?
Buckles: I don’t know
Committee: What are we speaking today?
Buckles: I don’t know
Committee: You don’t know whether you are speaking fluent English? Fluent English is what we are speaking at the moment!
No surprise that G4S shares plummeted immediately after this performance and Mr Buckles’ personal position is now very tenuous.
It is not everything that you are accused of that you should accept. Show some fighting spirit and defiance. Push back when the questioning goes too far because the confidence that people will have in you as a leader is determined not only be your willingness to take the hits, but your ability to hit back when it is needed.
Keep a calm and clear head so that you know when to defend and you are know when to attack.
Conclusion
Answering hard questions under the spotlight is challenging.
It takes great courage and inner strength to be able to handle it and not everyone can. In this day and age of great publicity and social media, the importance of the communication of a leader are indispensable and you, as a leader, must be willing and prepared to face up to and face down your inquisitors whilst protecting your company or organisation, as well as your own personal standing.
It is tough and not everyone is up to it. But that, after all, is why you get paid the big bucks.
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