Do You Know The Right Questions?

To get the information you need requires asking the right questions (Read my review of Debbie Ford's The Right Questions: Ten Essential Questions To Guide You To An Extraordinary Life), but how do you know what the right questions are? Surprisingly, this post was inspired by Chris Brogan‘s blog post “Rethink Your Web Presence.” The post is about whether or not your website is achieving your goals for it, and he asks six questions from the perspective of the user.

• Who do you want me to be?
• How will I know that I belong?
• What do you want to show/tell me?
• What do you want me to do?
• How will we keep this relationship going?
• How shall I talk of you to my friends?

This post got me thinking about a few things:  how we get the wrong answers because we didn't ask the right questions,  how we didn't achieve our objectives because we didn't meet the needs of our users. For internal and external clients, how can you give them what they need? I think the answer is to listen actively to what the client is saying, and ask lots of questions to grasp what's being said. It is my experience that many times what clients say they need is not what they really need, and the supplier has to ask many questions to identify the true need. As an information professional with over 15 years experience, I have seen this time and time again.

One trick I use, which I learned in computer science years ago, is to always reinterpret to the clients what you heard them say. This works all the time. And with the prevalence of email, after the meeting send an email outlining what you heard. If you are mistaken, the client will let you know.

Sometimes you'll not know what the right questions are, but if you are prepared for the meetings and listen hard, more than likely you'll figure it out. Another technique which is used by many consultants, is to ask, “If we were sitting here three years from today, what would have had to happen for you to be satisfied?” And you would adjust the time to shortly after the project ended.

And if you have a website or a blog, it would be great to answer Chris' six questions, I intend to. And while you are in the doing mood, read Penelope Trunk‘s post, Five tips for asking better questions. Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photo Credit: Bing via Apture

Note: This post has been updated.