Spring Break
The art of asking good questions
Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: Opinions
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After two months of full-time unpaid intern work last summer, I finally reached the goal I had been working toward: the chance to ask former President Bill Clinton any question I wanted, face-to-face.
And I blew it.
Instead of the life-changing exchange I had imagined, I launched into a rambling, semi-coherent policy inquiry about something involving Venezuela, Russia and oil.
Consequently, I wasted everyone's time and never got the info I wanted.
We all have many chances to ask questions, whether to people of national stature or to a professor or fellow student. Yet from what I have seen at the University and elsewhere, few of us are competent questioners.
By keeping a few simple strategies in mind, you should be able to take full advantage of opportunities to draw out a speaker's knowledge.
Almost all good questions share one quality - brevity. At a lecture discussing the potential for an avian flu disaster, the audience was subjected to a 10-minute tirade from a lady who thought she knew more than the health professional at the podium. Long-winded questions are unfair to the rest of the audience and confusing to the speaker.
Do not ask a question in order to show off. The best question from my fellow interns at President Clinton's question and answer session was simply, "What can be done to improve the United Nations?" which prompted a very interesting and insightful response.
In addition to keeping the question short, avoid asking questions on topics so esoteric or specific that few people in attendance would care about them.
At a campus event, one of the attendees continually tried to ask questions about what obviously was his area of specialty knowledge. His questions meant little to everyone else and were outside the scope of the speaker's knowledge, but this questioner persisted in taking the discussion off track for a good 15 minutes.
Keep your audience's interests in mind and stick to broader topics, or at least easily explainable specifics. Along with considering the audience, put your question in context with the rest of the session. Since questions usually come after a presentation and in between other questions, circumstances may require you to change your question to something more appropriate.
On the last question, for instance, ask for advice, solicit predictions for the future or make some other general query to tie everything up. I constantly see off-topic and overly specific questions come up at the end, which deny the audience proper closure. Come up with another question, or simply let someone else get the chance to ask one.
Students and professors alike should consider the following three essentials when asking a question: keep it brief, remember your audience and put your question in the context of the other questions.
The art of questioning takes practice as well as trial-and-error - hopefully with speakers other than a former president.
A good question, however, can provide that golden nugget of knowledge that makes a normal speech or lecture truly memorable and insightful.
- Chris Chiego is a columnist for The Red & Black
And I blew it.
Instead of the life-changing exchange I had imagined, I launched into a rambling, semi-coherent policy inquiry about something involving Venezuela, Russia and oil.
Consequently, I wasted everyone's time and never got the info I wanted.
We all have many chances to ask questions, whether to people of national stature or to a professor or fellow student. Yet from what I have seen at the University and elsewhere, few of us are competent questioners.
By keeping a few simple strategies in mind, you should be able to take full advantage of opportunities to draw out a speaker's knowledge.
Almost all good questions share one quality - brevity. At a lecture discussing the potential for an avian flu disaster, the audience was subjected to a 10-minute tirade from a lady who thought she knew more than the health professional at the podium. Long-winded questions are unfair to the rest of the audience and confusing to the speaker.
Do not ask a question in order to show off. The best question from my fellow interns at President Clinton's question and answer session was simply, "What can be done to improve the United Nations?" which prompted a very interesting and insightful response.
In addition to keeping the question short, avoid asking questions on topics so esoteric or specific that few people in attendance would care about them.
At a campus event, one of the attendees continually tried to ask questions about what obviously was his area of specialty knowledge. His questions meant little to everyone else and were outside the scope of the speaker's knowledge, but this questioner persisted in taking the discussion off track for a good 15 minutes.
Keep your audience's interests in mind and stick to broader topics, or at least easily explainable specifics. Along with considering the audience, put your question in context with the rest of the session. Since questions usually come after a presentation and in between other questions, circumstances may require you to change your question to something more appropriate.
On the last question, for instance, ask for advice, solicit predictions for the future or make some other general query to tie everything up. I constantly see off-topic and overly specific questions come up at the end, which deny the audience proper closure. Come up with another question, or simply let someone else get the chance to ask one.
Students and professors alike should consider the following three essentials when asking a question: keep it brief, remember your audience and put your question in the context of the other questions.
The art of questioning takes practice as well as trial-and-error - hopefully with speakers other than a former president.
A good question, however, can provide that golden nugget of knowledge that makes a normal speech or lecture truly memorable and insightful.
- Chris Chiego is a columnist for The Red & Black
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