Strategies for identifying hidden challenges through questioning

Beware of blind spots in team views or your thinking that undermine business performance. The best way to do this with your team is to continually ask the right questions in the right way to identify and avoid blind spots. Here are some key guidelines to drive this process: Avoid questions yes-or-no (yes/no) questions. are efficient Closed-end but don’t surface data that may be critical to a leader’s understanding. Questions are called open-ended when they allow for a variety of responses and provoke a richer discussion. These allow a leader to know what they don’t know and ultimately make a better decision.

Don’t lead the witness. Hard-charging leaders often push to confirm their own assumptions about what is occurring in a given situation and what is needed. This can result in questions that are disguised statements, like “Doesn’t this mean that we don’t have a quality problem?” These usually prevent contrary points of view and further data from surfacing. Beware of evasive answers. All too often, people will avoid giving direct answers to direct questions. They may not know the answers but want to appear smart, or they may not want to provide the answers if their response might highlight incriminating data. Leaders need to keep coming back with directed questions until they get either a straightforward answer or “We don’t know.”

Ask for supporting data or examples. Leaders need to ask questions that surface points of view and, at the appropriate time, also clarify which answers are based on fact and which are based on speculation. They should encourage people to say what they know from data versus what they think they know. Paraphrase to surface next-level details.

One technique to push people to provide more information is to paraphrase what you are hearing. While this may result in a yes or no response, proceeding to next-level questions opens up the dialogue. Smart leaders sometimes mis-paraphrase what they are hearing in order to provoke a richer dialogue.

Ask for alternatives. Another approach to surfacing non-confirming data is to overtly ask for an opposing point of view. A related line of questioning is to ask the respondent to alter his or her fundamental position, for example, “You are asking for $10 million to grow this brand. What more could you do if we gave you $25 million?”