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The simple truth is that an answer can only be as good as the question asked. If you ask the wrong question, you are going to get the wrong answer.
Asking good questions is hard because it requires you to see past the easy answers and to focus instead on the difficult, the tricky, the mysterious, the awkward, and sometimes the painful.
The only truly bad questions are not really questions at all. They are statements disguised as questions that are meant to be demeaning or designed to trip you up.
When I was in elementary school, our school custodian had a huge key ring hanging from his belt.
The keys fascinated me, in part because they seemed to outnumber the doors in our elementary school, or at least the doors that you could see as a student. I wondered what other doors, unseen, the keys might unlock, and what lay behind them. I thought the custodian was the most powerful person in school because he had all the keys. To me, keys signaled power. Questions are like keys. The right question, asked at the right time, will open a door to something you don’t yet know, something you haven’t yet realized, or something you haven’t even considered—about others and about yourself.
In almost every instance, it is better to ask clarifying questions first and to argue second. Before you advocate for a position, be sure to ask “Wait, what?” Inquiry, in other words, should always precede advocacy.
When faced with difficult conversations or emotionally charged situations, it is always a challenge to pause to ask if you have all of the facts you need to draw fair conclusions.
