A Plea for Good Questioners

This essay probes the issue of how you learn to ask fruitful questions. Almost any situation is enhanced in life by a good question or two, but learning how to ask them is often as elusive as finding love in the "Big City." And, indeed, you don't always question a person or a situation by framing a statement with a question mark at the end of it. Just as you learn to communicate in tango without saying a word, you might learn how to question without expressly forming an interrogative sentence. Questiong is situation-specific, and this is one of the challenges for those committed to questioning as part of their identity. Questioning begins from an expansive heart, however, from a heart that wants to know how things "connect" in the complex world around us. The following three principles of questioning should get us started.

Principle # 1 --You Make Mistakes

The first thing you realize if you devote yourself to being a questioner, is how hard it is. You need to see questioining as akin to learning a foreign language. The key to learning to speak a foreign language is not becoming self-conscious when you make mistakes. The most successful students of foreign languages are those who realize that mistakes can be gifts--you know only remember better your mistake and the right answer, but you begin to understand how better to study and learn.

So, this is the first principle. Questioners make mistakes. Loads of them. If you are uncomfortable with making mistakes, you will never be a good questioner. Why? Because when you question you sometimes wade inappropriately and unexpectedly deeply into some areas with various people, and you have to beat a hasty retreat. With others you struggle to come up with the right words, and you end up sounding like a fool. You have to learn to be able to swallow your pride and admit you don't understand things. Guess what? Most people who don't do much questioning don't understand either, but they are too self-conscious, too worried about feeling "dumb" to ask questions. Thus, if you are committed to living a life as a questioner, be prepared to feel like a fool in many instances. Be prepared to face the fear of wondering what others are thinking about you--whether you are a fraud or a dimwit--because you just know so little. Just be aware that they are as afraid as you are, but you have the courage to launch into the unknown area.

After a while, guess what happens? You get better at it. You learn what questions are appropriate to yield you the type of information you seek in the various situations of life. I try to frame it like this: I am after "important" but not "intimate" knowledge from most people. Thus, I learn to frame my questions with this in mind. I also look at people as having knowledge that I don't have and that they are, generally, more than willing to share with me if I just learn how to ask the "important" questions. Thus, you keep trying, and can eventually become as skillful a questioner as John Updike is a writer. To repeat my first principle. You learn to become a good questioner by giving up your fear of looking like a fool by making mistakes. Got it? Then you are ready for principle # 2.

Principle # 2-- Respect Yourself

The second key to becoming a good questioner is to respect the integrity of your own mind. What this means is that you adopt an interior attitude that differs from your external conduct. Your external conduct, as I have already indictated, is filled with mistakes. Your external conduct will be as follows: You will ask a question in this way: "I am not clear on XXX" (rather than "You didn't present XXX clearly"). "Would you please clarify (again) for me how XXX works?" Or, "I am sorry but I didn't understand your explanation of YYY. Would you please explain again what you think (for example) about Shakespeare's attitudes toward Jews in the Merchant of Venice?" But your external form of asking questions should really arise out of an inner attitude of self-respect.

What this means is that you are committed to the proposition that there really isn't anything that, if explained clearly enough or slow enough, you cannot understand. You, basically, can understand anything, given the right situation and amount of time. But if you have this attitude toward questioning and learning, your inner attitude will be as follows. "I don't understand things yet," rather than "I can't understand this." Or, to put it even more bluntly, when you don't understand something, you just naturally assume that the problem is with the speaker and not with you, the hearer. But to be clear, you never let on that you thnk that the speaker hasn't been clear or that the argument isn't helpful. You make the point that you don't understand, but in your heart of hearts you know that the reason you don't understand is that the person either hasn't explained it clearly or him/herself doesn't really understand what s/he is saying.

This dual attitude is not deceptive; it is simply a concession to the realities of the world, and it is true. You didn't follow the person's explanation. Thus, the most important hurdle to get over in asking good questions after you have surmounted the "water jump" of fear of mistakes, is to realize that the problem is with them and not with you, but that you have to act as if the problem is with you and not with them. If you live like this, you will approach the world, people, and knowledge with supreme, but humble, confidence. There really isn't anything you cannot understand. It just hasn't yet been explained clearly enough for you. Therefore, your quest is to find the sources that actually can explain things. You have had the capacity all along to understand. People/books, etc. just haven't been able to meet your capacity. You need to understand this to take you through the "dark night of the soul" when your questions seem just to keep reverberating back on your without any apparent hope for clarification. Keeping thinking that you are not the problem and, eventually, things start to clear up.

Principle # 3-- Taking "Upfront" Time to Question Saves Time

Let me illustrate this point by a story. A few years ago I hired the best craftsman in town, appropriately named Robert Kraft, to redo my windows completely. My home was built in 1941, and I have loads of windows on pulleys that the previous owner had neglected. Lots of interesting work needed to be done. I brought Robert into the house to see if he could help me. We walked over to one window. Robert opened it, felt the pulleys, gazed at the windows, and then looked off into space for what seemed an inappropriately long time. Finally, after I was going to ask him two or three times if he was still awake, he said, "Yes, Bill, we can do a good job for you." What was Robert doing in those several awkward minutes of silence, when he was gazing into space? He was asking himself questions in his mind about the "doability" of the project, and the best ways to go about it. Robert was not afraid or ashamed to spend a lot of "upfront" time just staring out into space while he questioned, and answered, himself. My point is this: by taking what is seemingly an inordinately long time "upfront" to question things, you end up saving loads of time (and money) in the long run. Why? Because of the mind's incredible ability to envision a future when you give it time to work. But we don't trust our minds enough. We rush into activities or tasks without really taking them apart and putting them together in our minds because we are afraid. Afraid, perhaps, that we will just come up with nothing. In that silent time, however, we are putting our questioning skills to work. People looking at us might think we are crazy--and so we "look" busy. But you have to learn to live with the feeling that you are making others awkward. The reward is that you will be able to question, and understand, the world better.

Conclusion

After getting to the end of my words, however, I am left with questions I don't know how to answer. Maybe you can help. The two most prominent are these: (1) How does questioning really work in an intimate relationship? and (2) How can you question effectively in an autoritarian political or work situation where, it appears, that questioning just isn't permitted? Any help? In the meantime, however, seek ways to question things. Seek to frame questions effectively. Your world will never be the same again.

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