Pleading for Good Questioners

For several months in the Summer and Fall of 1985 I was a "senior editioral writer" for the Oregonian in Portland, Oregon. I was hired by Bob Landauer, the editorial page editor, after we chatted amiably at an early 1985 reception for David Broder at the home of the President of Reed College. I had legitimately finagled my way into the reception even thought it was a sort of "Who's Who in Portland" reception, and I was a mere 32 year-old junior professor. Maybe, however, that is why Bob hired me on the spot. I was young and energetic; I had a sabbatical coming; I could put words together well as we were talking; I was at this important reception. During these editorial-writing months I labored over a new style of writing for me--short, pithy editorials--and learned some valuable tricks of the trade.

I have saved all my editorials that were published (64 of them) in a nice scrapbook at home. I don't look at it often, but last night as I was musing on how we learn and how people, companies or even nations get into trouble, I ran across my August 26, 1985 editorial entitled "A Plea for Good Questioners." I wrote the editorial at the time because Portland had experienced a few shootings of citizens by police in the previous weeks, and the city was on edge. After learning all I could about how the shootings occurred, it seemed to me that clarity of police procedures in highly confrontational situations was seriously lacking. I entitled the editorial as I did because I was convinced that had someone taken the time patiently to ask some questions about how the police were supposed to handle difficult confrontatory situations, the deaths might have been averted. I closed my editorial with this paragraph:

"It is not difficult to get employees who will do what they are told without hesitation. Sometimes that is what is needed. But when the smoke clears and the emergency is past, it is the persistent good questioners who should be needed. One's business and perhaps even one's life can depend on it."

Fast Forward to 2006

It wasn't the best editorial I ever wrote, but it stimulated my thinking once again last night. We are in a new age of learning, as I have previously argued, and what is key for our collective future, not simply as Americans but as citizens of this world, is that we learn how to ask fruitful questions of the broad range of people and material that comes into our lives. My contention is that learning to ask good and fruitful questions is a very difficult thing to do. I am convinced, however, that what unlocks the hearts of people, what gets useful information flowing, is based , in large part, on our ability to know which questions to ask in whatever situations we find ourselves. Random acts of kindness and evident sentiments of love will, no doubt, get you far, but until you have learned to perceive which questions allow you access into the heart of another you never are really sure how random, or even reckless, your act of kindness might be. I think that the purpose of my web site is not simply to give you lots of information about things I find interesting but to encourage you to learn how to frame questions and pursue your own interests. Jesus may have said, "The truth shall set you free," but I will paraphrase that in 2006 terms to "the question(s) will set you free." But how do you learn to ask right and good questions, question(s) that open up a person'a life and heart like that little metal ring that opens up the can of soup, like the key that springs a lock, like the handle that opens the door? The purpose of this and the next essay is to think with you about the revolutionary importance of good questions. I only have two points to make: (1) The Need for good questioners and (2) The method of good questioning.

The Need

The need for good questioners arises because we are a society increasingly awash with information. There is so much information out there that no one person, no team of persons, no university of persons, can wade throught it all, master and digest it, and then understand its significance for the world. Just think of reports that are "out there." The most "visible" one that is coming down the pike is that of the Iraq Study Group, set to be released on December 6. Many will rush out to "buy" it or, more likely, "download" it. But, guess what? We will begin to read it, and then the phone will ring. Then the kids will have something that needs to be attended to. Then, we will have to cook dinner and think about work. Ultimatlely, we won't be able to read it much less analyze it independently. We only can make use of it if we have a framework of questions already developed in our mind, a set of questions that act as a sort of "filter" to understand and wade through what we read. Questioners are necessary to understand current world realities. Though good questioners might not have been able to forestall the current Iraq morass, they may have been able to mitigate it. And, I think we are all realizing that now.

But when we turn to other kinds of knowledge, we also recognize the importance of good questioners. The number of web pages grows daily (blame it partially on this web site!). Someone has said there are six billion pages; someone else eight billion. Just that mere number boggles (or does it Google?) the mind. The basic principle of an Internet search is to yield a pile of results, not unlike a literal stack of papers that have to be waded through on your desk. Yet what Google has uniquely brought to the search process is its secret algorithm of "ranking" results in an order of importance so that your searches tend to be more "fruitful." Google is so popular because we instinctively realize that what we need at this point is not necessarily more information but a thread, a narrative, a way of sorting out some information to find what is useful for us. Google tries to help us as much as it can. But even before Google can really help us, we need to learn how to decide what we want to know. What we want to know is driven by the interior questions we develop. At this point the search engines are still relatively primative creations. They do not really know how to handle the nature of our questions, but they can respond to specific commands when we know exactly what we want. Sooner or later, I hope, search engines will be more "interactive." They will be able to respond to our questions.

Questions and Friendship

Finally, the need for good questioners arises because of the way that questions allow us to connect with each other, to form friendly and intimate relatinships. One of the challenges in meeting new people is to see if and how our world and their world intersect. Common interests, to be sure, fuel friendships. But often we are able to develop friendships because of a breadth of curiosity and shared interest that emerges from a prior ability to learn how to question the world. At this point in the worlds' history, when our world is more interdependent than ever before, at least from a communications standpoint, the need for good questioners is paramount. But, how do you do it? How can you be a good questioner in your work, in your family life, in your interaction with people, in your quest for knowledge? The next essay suggests how you can become one.

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