Are You Asking The Right Questions

If you are in business, chances are you are there to make money. Still, it would behoove you to consider other factors as well. Morals and ethics are very important of course. However, communications are an important aspect of every business. Every concept, every idea and even the smallest of details all must be clearly and effectively communicated if you are going to be successful. Learning to ask the correct question can save you many unwanted and unnecessary difficulties. Taking a little additional time to carefully consider what you want before you ask for it may make the difference between success and failure.

Some of you may have seen my article about one of my pet peeves. I still wonder why so many people get upset when you answer the question that they ask. Then again, how important is it really? Surely people can figure out what we mean right? So when does this become a matter of importance to you as an individual?

One “for instance” that comes to mind occurred when I was very young. Being raised in a small town with no internet, before video games and before most people even had television sets or even electricity; we managed to find other ways of getting in trouble. My brother and I would frequently “hang out with the old-timers” at the general store. The cast of characters there is far too complicated to even try to explain to someone who has never lived in a small town. We had all sorts of characters and all of us loitered at the general store more than just a little bit.

While it is rare to have strangers in a small town, it is not at all unheard of. Living as we did, close to the “main” highway (also known as one of the few paved two-lane roads) we would occasionally get people traveling through who would stop by the store. On even rarer occasions, they would make an effort to communicate with the locals while they “Shared a pop” (or drank a soda with us) and partake in our local ritual of “Smoking and joking” where we would swap tall tales with each other. (Usually while drinking either soda, beer or coffee and smoking cigarettes; thus the term)

So what does that have to do with learning how to ask the right question? On one occasion, a gentleman came by and appeared to want to partake in some local conversations. My brother and I were seated on the front steps of the store and one of the other locals had his dog tied up to the hitching post nearby. He asked me and my brother if our dog bites people. We explained to him that our dogs knew better as we had trained them well. As he proceeded to try and pet the dog at the hitching post, he got bit quite severely on one hand.

Somehow or another it was difficult for him to fathom that this was not our dog at all but one that belonged to someone else. Perhaps if he had made an inquiry about the dog he was attempting to approach, he would have been much better off. So who was at fault here? Perhaps my brother and I could have prevented the circumstances, but we were brought up differently. To openly defy one of our elders would have resulted in a meeting with the board of education firmly planted onto our seat of knowledge. In city speak, that would mean that we would have received quite a spanking for talking back and being disrespectful.

Many people still hold us accountable when they hear the circumstances surrounding the incident. If you have ever been on the receiving end of a hickory switch or a cinch strap, perhaps you will understand our hesitation to talk back to an elder. Had he simply asked the question that he wanted answered, none of the unpleasant events would have transpired.

It does not matter if you are interviewing someone for an article or book or interviewing for a job. If you learn to ask the actual question that you would like to have answered, you will find that you will more frequently get the answers that you wanted. If you give people room to assume or presume, they often will. If they cannot understand the question you are asking but must think about it and try and figure out what you meant, you will not get the answers you want.

The consequences are not always so dire when this happens. Still, many unpleasant scenarios can be avoided by simply asking the correct question in the first place. If the subject matter is worth examining at all, surely it should be worth looking at it enough to figure out the truth of the matter? Next time you get an answer that you do not like, take a moment to look at the question you are asking. Changing the question may just change the answer into one you do want.

By: Ward Tipton

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Ward Tipton has been an author and editor for over twenty years. He has specialized the last three years in writing for some of the most prominent Internet Marketers around the world. He is now breaking out on his own and slowly but surely breaking into the world of Internet Marketing from a unique perspective and with a style and abilities that go much farther than his power of persuasion utilizing nothing more than the written word.