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

How was this happening?
Who was responsible?
As he went on the air for an interview with Louisiana senator Mary
Landrieu, Cooper had a hyperaware sense of the sounds around him—flies
buzzing and plastic sheets whipping in the wind—the sounds of neglect,
incompetence, and prolonged suffering. He got right to it, asking Landrieu:
Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is
happening now?
Should they apologize for what is happening now?
Landrieu dodged.
There would be “plenty of time” to discuss the issues of “when and how and
what and if …,” she said. Everyone understood the situation was serious. She
wanted to thank people—the president, the military, the first responders, leaders
who had visited, fellow senators. Maybe Anderson hadn’t heard the news yet,
she droned on, but the Senate had passed a supplemental $10 billion emergency
relief bill.
After nearly a full minute of this, Cooper jumped in.
“Senator, excuse me for interrupting. For the last four days I’ve been seeing
dead bodies in the street. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and
complimenting each other, you know I’ve got to tell you, there are a lot of
people here who are very upset and very angry and very frustrated. And when

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they hear politicians thanking one another, it kind of cuts them the wrong way
right now because literally—there was a body on the streets of this town
yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been lying in the streets
for forty-eight hours and there are not enough facilities to take her up.” Then he
asked:
Do you get the anger that is out here?
Landrieu, stilted and robotic, sounded like she was reading from a script.
“Anderson, I have the anger inside of me …”
Who are you angry at?
“I’m not angry at anyone …”
She never directly addressed the question of who was responsible for the
failure in New Orleans.
“Being in a place like that, all the bullshit is stripped away,” Cooper told me.
“It’s like the flesh is ripped off and everything is raw and exposed. I just got
angry … it just seemed wrong. It just seemed inappropriate.” He had been
listening for an answer and instead got evasion and excuses.
Cooper brought together firsthand knowledge of the story with a sense of
moral outrage. His questions demanded accountability. Landrieu’s answers,
which were shockingly unresponsive, only accentuated the ineptitude of
government at a moment of crisis. Landrieu’s performance tarnished her
reputation; Cooper’s performance elevated his. But Cooper’s approach
highlighted a pillar of confrontational questioning: persistence. He interrupted
when Landrieu tried to make an irrelevant speech instead of offering a direct
response. He returned to his question and asked again. He applied righteous
indignation to emphasize the moral certitude that motivated his questioning. In
the end, Landrieu acknowledged nothing, but the record was clear.
Unintended Consequences
Even with extensive knowledge, preparation, and skin in the game,
confrontational questioning can go off the rails. I learned this the hard way, in a
very public setting, when I interviewed one of the world’s most controversial
and charismatic figures.

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It was one of the strangest interviews I’ve done. I “presided” at the
prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., in front of a live
audience and a cluster of cameras from around the world. My task was to ask
Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a few questions
and then open the discussion to audience Q&A. Some people still considered
him a terrorist. Others viewed him as a freedom fighter. It was a challenging
assignment.
As we gathered, the Mideast was again in turmoil. Another Palestinian
uprising, an intifada, had ignited the territories. The world bore witness to the
sad story of the region’s endless conflict and suffering—this time, through
pictures of young protesters, children in many cases, throwing rocks and using
slingshots against well-armed Israeli troops. In the most searing image, cameras
captured the fatal shooting of a twelve-year-old boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, as
his father tried to protect him with his bare hands while they huddled behind a
metal barrel.
Mixed with the outrage directed at both sides were calls for Arafat to
encourage Palestinian children to stay off the streets and away from the
hostilities. But Arafat was silent. Israeli leaders and others accused him of
actually wanting more victims, more incendiary images to wave around in an
effort to pressure Israel and rally global opinion.
I wanted to ask Arafat about those children. They were too young to be
dying in his streets, too young to be traded for propaganda points. I felt he
needed to answer his critics.
Why had he been silent?
Why didn’t he protect his children?
How did he respond to criticism from around the world?
I knew he would bristle at the accusation. I had worked the phones, talking to
people who knew Arafat and the Middle East to figure out the best way to frame
the questions so he’d actually answer. Acknowledge his stature, the experts told
me. Play to his influence and his ego. Invoke the protective instinct a father feels
when his child is in danger. In a region so poisoned by history, frame the
question to look forward, not back. Appeal to his sense of destiny. All of it was
sound advice. None of it worked.
We were seated at the front of a room on a small platform that was just big
enough for our two green-upholstered armchairs and a coffee table with two

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glasses and a pitcher of water. Arafat wore his trademark kaffiyeh, a checkered
head wrap that draped nearly to his waist. The room was packed. USA Today
described the crowd as the “crème de la crème of the U.S. foreign policy
establishment.”
I began with some innocuous questions about Arafat’s meeting that day with
President Clinton, the situation on the ground, and prospects for resuming
negotiations with the Israelis. Just before I went to audience questions, I turned
to the issue of the children. Reflecting the advice I’d been given, I credited
Arafat with being the “longtime leader” of the Palestinian people. I sought to
acknowledge his influence by invoking “many” in America and the Middle East
who said he had an “opportunity” to act. I made reference to his authority and
tried to connect it to the future and the children by saying he could call on people
“to stand down …” I hadn’t gotten the full question out of my mouth when he
erupted.
“We are animals?” he shouted at me. I continued, intent on getting a
response to the question I’d asked.
“Specifically, the children …”
He leaped out of his chair, shaking his finger. “You want me to treat our
people as animals?” He appeared to be on the verge of storming out of the room.
“Sir,” I asserted, “I merely asked a question …”
I crossed my legs and extended them to fill the space between that coffee
table and us, blocking his most obvious escape route. After a few seconds that
felt like forever, he sat down, glowering. We continued.
It was an especially awkward moment because I was meant to be both
questioner and gracious host. Arafat was a “guest” of the Council, whose events
were supposed to be thoughtful and dignified. But this question about the
children had to be asked, and asked unapologetically. I should have pushed
harder and worried less about civility and propriety. I didn’t want to lose him,
though. By now, it was time for questions from the audience.
One person took up where I left off. He came from AIPAC of all places, the
American-Israeli lobby. He asked my question again, this time employing a
highly effective technique in confrontational questioning: He invoked an
impeccable third party. This tactic shifts the burden of assertion from the
questioner to someone with expertise, stature, or moral authority. In this case,
the impeccable third party was the Queen of Sweden, who had very publicly
commented on the use of Palestinian children in the uprising.
“As a mother, I’m very worried about this … the children should not take

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