The SMART Question

 

I came across this interesting dialogue few years back. 

Sometimes, asking question in a wrong or unclear way may confuse the listener and in some cases, create unnecessary misunderstanding. Asking question is an essential skill required in the requirement gathering task in most projects. It is a soft skill that looks simple on the face of it (who doesn’t know how to ask question?) but extremely difficult to master. One useful guideline that may help to improve effectiveness in the communication is to focus on the 5 Ws (What, Why, Who, When and Where) in your question. First, you need to consider what to ask in your question and how to phrase it and decide whether the question should be open-ended or specific and direct to the point. You need to keep asking yourself why you need to ask the question and whether it is appropriate and adequate. Then you must also make sure you are asking the question to the right person, at the right time and right location. The approach you use and the words you choose in your question are also critical in order not to leave any room for ambiguity. If there are any special terminologies or idiosyncrasies that are expected to be used in the conversation, they have to be clearly defined and communicated up front to everyone to prevent unnecessary confusion.

For example, I once came across a print on a mug that says – ‘Failure is not an option’. Speaking the lingua franca in software development industry, most software developers will interpret the phrase ‘not an option’ as ‘mandatory’ since anything that is not optional to them must be mandatory (you will know what I mean if you have ever tried filling up an online form where all fields with a star ‘*’ are mandatory and the rest are optional). In other words, a simple and positive statement like ‘Failure is not an option’ may turn out the opposite way as ‘Failure is a mandatory’ if it is not interpreted correctly. If you think this is funny, it only gets worse when the whole event of requirement gathering is to be conducted in a multicultural and multilingual environment where the differences in culture and language pose to be a challenge in communication. Still not convinced? Take a look at some of the funniest Chinese-to-English translations at Engrish.com.

“The ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle of finding the answer”, once said Thomas J. Watson. How true this statement is. Yet to be able to ask the right question, it takes more than just addressing the 5 Ws mentioned earlier. At the very least, your question should be SMART – Specific, Meaningful, Appropriate, Relevant and Timely. On top of all these, you still need to close the loop. You need to make sure that the person fully understands your question before he or she attempts to answer it. One way to achieve this is to ask the person to explain your question back to you. Listen carefully to what the person says and clarify any dubious points immediately. Keep in mind that all of us come from different backgrounds and something that looks common sense to you may not be very obvious to others. The important point is to keep your question SMART to avoid ambiguity.

Occasionally, people may like to ask questions which no one is able to answer and they feel great about it. Some of those who are more egotistic actually feel intellectually superior and excited when no one is able to understand their questions. Honestly, asking a question that is difficult to answer is no big deal. The real challenge is how to raise a question that is simple enough that everyone, from the CEO sitting in the corner room to the pantry lady, is able to understand and hopefully, provide some good answers. Anyway, at the end of the day, what is the point of asking a question that you can’t find an answer? Keep asking SMART questions, and not questions that make you look smart.

To ask a hard question is simple. However, to ask a simple question is hard.