This month’s Harvard Business Review posits there are 5 types of questions. (I love a framework like this, because immediately I start testing it, and wondering if actually there are only 3, or more like 7 types of questions….) The thesis is we get smarter if we notice which types of questions we’re inclined to ask and which ones we avoid. The author suggests when we have consequential decisions, we can think about them better if we subject them to all the different kinds of inquiry.
Certainly the larger idea is true. My clients tend to be great at the investigative questions (what’s known? What’s true? Where are we now?) and the productive questions: (What do we need to do to get from point A to point B?). The speculative, interpretive, and subjective questions — those about dreams and possibilities, meaning and deeper patterns, and feelings — are less familiar. That’s terrain I love to travel, and I like sharing the map and guiding people through those questions.
Besides question type, one of the things I think about in my work with clients is question speed. I tell my clients that I don’t always want their fast answers or their first answer. My clients tend to prize their ability to have cogent answers quickly. I want the second answer, the third answer, the shy answer. I want the answer that only shows up partway through a long walk, when you were thinking about something else.
