Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 2
SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT

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Diagnostic Questions
T
HERE ARE DAYS REPORTERS DREAD
, but they come with the territory. A rumor, a phone
call, and then a pit in your stomach, no matter how seasoned you are. A passenger jet
has disappeared. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the crew. The plane vanished
from radar screens. Airline and aviation authorities are racing to figure out what’s
gone wrong. So are we.
?
In the newsroom, we are scrambling, preparing to go on the air with the
story. What exactly will we say? What do we know? Where will definitive
information come from? And when? We deploy reporters. We’re all over the
FAA and the FBI and the airline. We’re using new flight-tracking apps. We’re
working sources, contacting anyone who might have heard anything. We brace
ourselves for the most perilous time in live TV—that period after something
happens but before anyone in authority can confirm what actually happened. If
we get it wrong, we spread misinformation, scare innocent people, and may even
affect the actions of first responders. We tarnish our credibility and outrage our
viewers.
A lot of our work will unfold in real time, right in front of the audience as we
ask the questions that track what’s going on and what went wrong.
What airline and flight number?
How many were on board?
When and where did it disappear?
These are the first harried questions we ask in those early, frenzied moments
—the who, what, when, and where questions of a breaking story.
Was there mechanical trouble?
Was anyone on a watch list?
What did witnesses see?
We need to know what happened and what went wrong. Until those
questions are answered, the rest of the story will remain a mystery.

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What’s the Problem?
Fortunately, most planes land safely, and life does not unfold in a TV newsroom.
But our need to identify problems so we can act on them is an ingredient of daily
existence. The reporter’s rapid instinct, like the clinician’s expertise in
connecting symptoms to illness, is a skill you can develop and incorporate into
your questioning to become better, faster, and more precise when you have to
diagnose a problem. Whether it’s a life-threatening condition or a leak in the
basement, a pain in the shoulder or an issue at work, you have to figure out what
the problem is before you can do anything about it. You have to ask the right
questions, accept bad news, and roll with the unexpected to get the answers you
need in a timely fashion.
Since human beings first stepped out of our caves, we realized that if we
were to survive, we had to identify peril and then avoid or overcome it. That still
holds true, although these days, with Wi-Fi in our caves, we often call the
experts. Still, we can hone our skills so that our diagnostic questioning is
sharper. We can be better questioners of the doctor or the mechanic or the boss
when they think they have the answers to our problems. We can challenge our
political leaders when they speak with certainty about a simple problem and an
easy solution.
Diagnostic questioning is the ground floor of inquiry. It is the foundation on
which other questions are built. It pinpoints a problem and provides a roadmap
for a response.
What’s wrong?
How do we know?
What are we not seeing?
What should we do?
Diagnostic questioning identifies a problem then burrows down to its roots,
especially when those roots are not instantly obvious.
Your tooth is killing you. You go to the dentist. She asks where it hurts,
when it hurts. When you chew? When you drink? She taps, pokes, and applies
cold water till you leap out of the chair. Oh sorry, did that hurt? Yes, you grunt,
through the junkyard that litters your palate. She says the problem is this other
tooth. You’re feeling “referred pain.” An X-ray confirms it. A filling fixes it.
Your company recently introduced a new product. It isn’t selling. Everyone

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thinks it’s a flop. You’re not so sure, so you hire some consultants to figure out
what’s going on. They conduct focus groups. They ask lots of questions about
this product and similar ones. They discover that people actually like it and
several of them say they’d buy it—if they knew about it. Turns out the
marketing was the problem.
Diagnostic questions, whether they are directed at a company or a cavity,
progress systematically to describe the problem and identify it.