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 move that best advances the driving question: one clean question, a small set composed to climb together, 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 you do or ask 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 you ask it.

• 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 you already supplied the answer, you asked nothing.