ask-questions

The game

A question is an instrument: the words you pick decide what comes back. And a good question rarely works alone — it serves one inquiry. Name the question the inquiry exists to answer, and call it the driving question. Every candidate question is then a rung that must earn its place on the ladder toward it. The output is the next move that best advances the driving question: one clean question, or a deliberate non-question move.

The rung test

Two gates hold in the core. First, relevance: would a complete answer to this question at least partly answer the driving question? If not, it's a digression dressed as a rung — cut it, or find the question that isn't. Second, discrimination: would different answers to it change what is done or asked next? A question whose every possible answer leaves your next move unchanged fails, however relevant its topic.

The four clarity laws

Every drafted question passes all four before it is asked or handed on.

• One idea per question. Two ideas joined by "and" or "or" force the person to pick a half to answer, and you lose the other.
• Plain words, matched to their vocabulary. If they call it a "ticket," you call it a ticket.
• No smuggled premise. "What was that like?" carries nothing in; "Wasn't that awful?" answers itself and tells them what to say.
• A real question, not a statement wearing a question mark. If the question already supplies the answer, it asks nothing.