(Difference between revisions)

Current revision as of 15:59, 29 October 2007

• Questions recover information, clarify meaning and add choices.
• Questions provoke a "transderivational search": when you look through your ideas, memories and experience to search for something that will enable you to make sense of the question.
• Questions can be asked from different perceptual positions. They can be internal, external, direct, manipulative, and contain assumptions.
• Questions may be open or closed. Closed questions require only a "yes" or a "no" answer. Open questions begin with what, who, why, when, where and how.
  • What?
    seeks information
    elicits outcomes
  • Who?
    seeks information about people
  • Why?
    seeks justifications and reasons for actions
    seeks values
    allocates blame
    searches for meaning
    looks for past causes
  • When?
    orients in time
    seeks time-bound information (past, present, or future)
    asks for triggers and cues for action
  • Where?
    asks for information about places
  • How?
    explores process
    models the process
    elicits strategies
    asks for quality and quantity (How many? How much?)
• What can questions do?
  • elicit states
  • get information
  • give choices or take them away, depending on the presuppositions
  • direct attention and so create reality
  • cause a transderivational search
  • model strategies
  • elicit resources
  • challenge assumptions
  • orient in time by asking about past, present, or future
  • elicit outcomes
  • associate or dissociate
  • give strategies
  • build (or break) rapport
  • summarize
  • elicit values
• Questions about questions
  • What is the most useful question I can ask right now?
  • What don't I know that would make a difference if I did?
  • What question can I ask that will best help my companion?
  • What question would get me closest to my outcome?
  • Do I need to ask a question at all?