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6 • Use Creative Questioning - Part 1

Checklists are one technique which will aid you in asking questions. But questioning should be almost a continuous process throughout a problem-solving effort. The questions and the answers provide the bricks and mortar with which you build toward your solution of a problem. A strong sense of curiosity, coupled with a well-developed capacity for questioning, is vital to creative thought of any kind.

Questioning is an art. Like any other art, learning it is best accomplished by acquiring some understanding of the aims and methods and adding a large amount of practice in the technique.

Much of this needed learning could, for an adult, be better classified as "relearning" because it involves methods and tech­niques that you probably used quite instinctively and intensively as a child. After all, the time of your life when you were learning at the highest rate possible was probably between the ages of four and six. And you were undoubtedly asking more questions per unit of time during those years than in any years since.

For an adult to recapture this questioning attitude and ability (which was lost largely through the indifference of parents, school teachers, classmates, and the "big kids" of the neighborhood and their unwillingness to put up with "silly kid" questions) calls, first, for getting over the feeling that he is parading his ignorance in asking. An adult, through constant exposure to the school of success that says, "Never show what you don't know," is usually afraid to ask questions. Some of this fear is undoubtedly the old fear of sounding foolish when asking a question. Some of it may be due to not knowing how to ask meaningful and worthwhile questions. Actually, it is only through questions that a person can learn. Only by questioning other people's thoughts and asking questions of your own mind, can you hope to uncover theo­ries, new ideas, and new combinations of thoughts that will lead the way to new and better ways of doing things. And it is always good policy to start by questioning yourself first. Your own experience and knowledge, if they have been properly acquired, are probably as good as anyone else's. You start questioning others when you run out of answers yourself.

There is, needless to say, a difference, and an important one, between questions of idle curiosity ("What's the weather like outside?" or "Read any good books lately?") and what Einstein called the "driving spirit of inquiry" of the truly creative person. The questions asked by a person driven by this creative spirit are not usually asked, nor can they be answered, lightly. So in trying to build your own questioning ability, keep in mind that it is somewhat like taking setting-up exercises. If you take them halfheartedly—just now and then—very little good will result. However, everyone realizes that such exercises taken for a purpose—and taken purposively—can do wonders. In the same way, purposeful use of questions can work wonders for your imagination and your general thinking abilities—and can do so in a short while.

(Before going any further on this subject, the executive must never forget that his questioning should be done in a positive frame of mind. Too many people use questions as a way of establishing their presence in an organization. They never go after the answers—they just raise questions. The object of creative questioning is to uncover new possibilities for better ways of doing things. The person who asks a creative question does so with the intention of finding the answer himself!)

Related terms include business communication and business information systems.