How to Ask Interesting Questions

So there are really two things that you need to keep in mind when you’re doing this.

One is you need to think around the topic and two as you need to be able to ask open questions.

Not every question is a good question.

You have to know that First not every question is a good question.

If your goal is a good conversation and you can test that by asking those questions and seeing if other people have a lot to say so let’s first talk about what some bad questions might be for discussion.

So let’s say we’re talking about smoking in public.

This is something people talk about in America.

There are a lot of rules about smoking in public where it can be done where it can’t be done.

And these conversations happen.

But let’s look at a bad question.

If we’re having a good discussion there are good questions and bad questions.

A bad question might be when did smoking first become banned in your city.

So this is a when question and the answer to this when questioned by the way banned means it became illegal.

The answer to this ban question doesn’t really matter to the conversation let’s say it’s 1998.

What can you say after that.

When did smoking become banned in your city.

Well either the answer is I don’t know or I know it’s 1998 with either answer Do you really feel like OK now I have something to say.

No this is not a very good question at all because it doesn’t make the other person think of anything.

It doesn’t make them want to share an opinion.

Instead we should focus on saying something that makes the other person want to give their opinion.

Because when someone asks for your opinion you probably have a lot to say.

Another example of a bad question is a very basic yes no question like Is Is smoking allowed at the airport.

It’s either yes or it’s no.

So we have to be very careful about yes no questions because sometimes yes no questions are just conversation Enders they sort of end the conversation or they make it hard to continue.

Now sometimes yes no questions work.

If you said for example do you think smoking should be allowed at airports then someone could say no I don’t.

And then you could say why.

So asking a do you think question can be really good as long as you follow up with why.

And then you get there thinking the other person’s thinking behind the issue.

OK.

So I think we’ve made it clear that asking for basic information a fact asking someone to tell you a fact about something that they may or may not know or asking them to answer a very very basic yes no question that these are bad ideas when it comes to actually communicating with another person and having a good discussion.

Nothing wrong with those questions.

If you’re looking for the answers.

But when you have a discussion you’re not looking for the answers really you’re looking to engage with another person to connect with another person.

So we want to keep our questions open asking how questions asking why questions.

We’ll look at some more examples of the types of questions that we can ask.

But these are more open questions.

But we also have to think around the topics I want to talk about what that really means to think around a topic.

Think about a topic as something at the center.

So this is at the center.

OK here’s here’s this thing at the center and this is our topic which is smoking in public.

OK.

What are the things that are related to this connected to this in some way.

We have to now be able to think in the abstract to think abstractly Well we could directly ask questions about smoking in public.

We could also ask questions about addiction ups HDD addiction right.

We could talk about how people are addicted to smoking we could talk about.

We could talk about peer pressure peer pressure is the idea that because all of my friends do something I do something and that might be related to why is it that more men smoke than women.

Why is it that in some countries smoking is very popular but in others it isn’t.

We could talk about maybe we could talk about hypotheticals and this is where we just sort of imagine a situation that may or may not be true let’s say for example that in the future medicine is so good that it’s impossible for you to die from heart disease or cancer.

Does that mean that we should no longer think about smoking.

What do you think the future would be like in regards to smoking.

If we didn’t have to worry about heart disease or cancer would smoking still be popular or not.

And then you could ask why is that OK.

So this is maybe an interesting question we could ask lots of these sorts of hypothetical interesting imaginary questions in imaginary situations related to the topic of smoking or health or even addiction or peer pressure.

Maybe another related topic connected to this is about public spaces.

How much control should the government have over public spaces.

Should the government be able to control everything about what is done in a public space.

We could of course we could talk about health risks.

Now this one you have to be a little bit careful about because if you just say to the other person could you please tell me the risks involved with maybe smoking.

Well it’s a little bit obvious right.

If you ask someone to tell you what risks are involved with smoking it’s kind of just a list of things well you could get cancer.

Well you could get heart disease.

Well you could get this.

Well you could get this and then you’re just asking people to know something and then they’re just basically telling you the list of things that they know is that really a discussion.

Again focus more on on opinions focus more on getting somebodies idea.

Focus more on getting solutions to problems.

Right.

So if we’re talking about the health risks maybe they’re obvious but maybe we focus on one specific thing maybe we focus on the health risks related to a mother’s right.

Pregnant women.

And how could we have a space for people to smoke and at the same time make sure that pregnant women are not exposed to what we call second hand second hand smoke.

Right now we’re looking for solutions.

When you ask somebody to give you a good idea about how to solve something a lot of the time people will be very interested to share their idea.

So all of these things are kind of connected to this idea of smoking in public but they’re not exactly only the topic of smoking in public.

So I just want to give you this thought before we really look at some examples.

When you want to have a discussion keep the questions open and your main focus should be to get the other person thinking about something to give an opinion.

To give a solution to give an idea to consider something that’s hypothetical which means not real.

And also don’t just stay on that one thing look directly around it in the abstract and think about what ideas are related to that topic or that discussion point or whatever it is and then use those related ideas or the topic itself to ask those really interesting questions.

If you get good at this everyone will want to have conversations with you.

If you get good at asking good questions then other people will really want to communicate with you and share their ideas with you and we’ll respect you when you’re having a discussion it’s not about I’ll say my opinion you say your opinion.

It’s about listening to what other people say and thinking about how to ask them a great question that opens up a completely new idea.

Whenever I have discussions with people I always try to focus on the questions instead of just giving my opinions because I find the questions and the answers to those questions.

If they’re good questions allows me to understand another person more and maybe maybe get a new idea that I never thought about before.