There is such a thing as a “stupid question” and most likely, you probably have asked or have been asked one recently. Your ability to ask good questions not only helps find out what (you think) you want to know, but identifying and avoiding bad questions that people ask you can be a great time saver. Dumb questions are one of the biggest time sucks in one’s day.

For the purpose of this article, I am going to focus on questions in the work place. Asking questions is an art form and there are times and places for all sorts of questions to get what you want. A dumb question is asking the wrong type of question at the wrong time. Answering a dumb question is just as bad as asking one.

Here are some of the questions you want to avoid asking or answering:

• The Rhetorical Question - If you are trying to make a point, just make it. I have found that when I am doing public speaking, 90% of the questions are really just statements from people trying to prove how smart they think they are. If you are really trying to find something out, avoid this as you just upset the people you need to help you. On the positive side, these questions are easy to ignore if you are presented with one.
• The Lawyer Question – This is the question that sets up only one way to answer it, and is always a trap. It often takes the form of a yes or no question to something that does not have a yes or no answer. This may be fun if you are a lawyer, but otherwise, it is passive aggressive behavior. People asking you these types of questions are just looking for an argument. You can avoid falling into these traps by stating you don’t know the answer to”that” question, but then ask your own properly phrased question with the answer you want to give.
• The CEO Question - This is where a question is asked that is irrelevant to what is really needed. Often asked by the CEO who asks something that is interesting for them to know, but doesn’t help them at all. I frequently run into this in my management consulting jobs. The executive management will ask for numbers and statistics for some aspect of their business, but when I ask them what they will do if I provide that information to them and they have that deer in headlights look. If you are not going to do anything with the information for which you are asking, don’t ask it. You are wasting everybody’s time. If posed with one of these questions, look to clarify the end result sought before spending your time.
• The “You Could Figure It Out Yourself” Question - This would be asking questions you can probably answer yourself. Beyond short changing yourself, this often irritates people because you are in essence telling them that their time is worth less than your time. This seems to be a widespread problem where people want their information spoon fed and have given up using their own powers of deduction. I see this one in the workplace among peers more than any other type of question. If somebody asks you one of these types of questions, urge them to help solve the problem themselves by going through the resolution process you would take yourself. If you answer these questions on a regular basis, you put yourself in a position that encourages even more of these types of questions stripping you of your valuable time.
• The Ambiguous Question – Any question using undefined words or words whose intent is not understood has an outcome that is often doomed from the beginning. People asking ambiguous questions do so unknowingly because they already have the context needed to understand what they are asking. If presented with one of these questions, make sure you gather the background context if the question can be interpreted in more than one way.

Asking and answering dumb questions can be one of your greatest wastes of time. Learn to identify the above bad questions in the workplace and you can increase your efficiency three fold.

Next time, I will provide a list of tips for asking good questions that will not only get the things you seek, but will also get your coworkers willing and motivated to help you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Career and Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.