At a recent training I became aware that the students were not taking advantage of open and probing questions to gather information in their topics. The persistence of asking direct closed questions, which can be answered with just a yes or no is the result of years of doing it that way. I needed to find a way to clearly illustrate the advantage of asking an open, narrative inducing, TEDS question over just asking many closed, specific item of information, closed questions.
I thought about the game Battleship, here are the rules in case you don’t know them.
Setup:
Each player has a grid of 100 squares (10x10).
Secretly place ships of different lengths on your grid (horizontal or vertical, not diagonal).
Objective:
Be the first to sink all of your opponent’s ships.
Gameplay:
Players take turns calling out coordinates (e.g., “B4”).
Opponent replies “Hit” if a ship is at that coordinate or “Miss” if not.
Mark results on your tracking grid.
Sinking Ships:
When all squares of a ship are hit, it is sunk.
Announce when a ship is sunk (e.g., “You sank my battleship”).
Winning: The game ends when one player sinks all enemy ships.
I realized that typical gameplay employed only closed yes or no questions.
This mirrors closed questioning in interviews (“Did you see him?” “Were you there?”). Each answer adds very little. The interviewer remains in control but learns almost nothing.
What if you concentrated on one item (topic) and asked a more productive question such as one of the 5WH questions. who, where, what, when, why and how. (Excluding multiple questions or forced choice questions which contain “or”)
This is equivalent to moving from a yes/no to a broader probing style question (“Where on the street were you?”). Efficiency increases, and detailed information comes faster.
Finally, Using the open TEDS style of questioning, such as tell me, explain to me, describe to me, or show me. The use of such a question with a cooperative person would result in
This mirrors the TEDS approach in interviews (“Tell me everything you remember about last night from the moment you left work.”). The subject provides detail in their own words, which can then be followed up with probing questions for clarification and closed questions if confirmation or checking is applicable.
An oversimplified explanation of the power of questions to elicit detailed information for sure but it may be just enough to stop a reliance on the ubiquitous closed question.
Training that does not have the student practice questioning – MISS. Training scenarios that require students to actively use questions to obtain information from a witness and a subject – HIT
