How to ask better questions
In most disagreements both people are making statements at each other. Whoever starts asking gets three things at once: time, information, and a much better idea of what is actually being disputed.
This is the highest-value habit on this whole site, and it is the least dramatic.
What is actually happening
When two people trade assertions, neither finds out why the other believes what they believe. So both keep restating the same claim in slightly different words, getting more frustrated that it is not landing.
Very often the disagreement is not where either of them thinks it is. One question can move the whole conversation to where the real difference lives.
Why it happens
- Asking feels like conceding ground, especially if you are already on the back foot.
- There is a fear of looking uninformed, so people assert instead of asking.
- Nobody teaches it. Most of what passes for discussion is modelled on debate, where asking is a tactic rather than an interest.
What it looks like
Someone says social media should be banned for under-sixteens.
- You say that will not work and they will find a way around it.
- They say something has to be done.
- You say something has to be done, but not that.
- Twenty minutes later neither of you knows whether you disagree about the harm, the enforcement or the principle.
What to do instead
1. Ask what would change their mind
"What would have to be true for you to think differently?" If there is no answer, you have learned the conversation is not about evidence — which is worth knowing before you spend an hour on evidence.
2. Ask for the specific, not the general
"Can you give me an example?" Abstractions are where arguments go to become unresolvable. Examples can be examined.
3. Ask where the line is
"At what point would you say it goes too far?" This finds the actual edge of a position, which is almost never where the headline version suggests.
4. Ask what they think you believe
Frequently it is not what you believe, and half the argument was about a position nobody in the room holds.
5. Then stop talking
The question only works if the silence after it is left alone. Most people rescue the other person from a pause and lose the answer.
Try this
- In your next disagreement, ask three questions before making your second statement.
- Make one of them "what's your strongest argument for that?"
- Do not treat the answer as something to rebut. Just take it in.
- Afterwards, ask yourself what you learned that you did not know before.
- If the answer is nothing, your questions were disguised statements.
What it sounds like
Statements at each other
Them: Phones should be banned in schools.
You: That doesn't fix anything, kids will just use them outside.
Them: At least they'd concentrate in class.
You: They'd concentrate if lessons were better.
Four statements, nothing learned. Both are arguing about a solution without having established what problem the other is solving.
One of you asks
Them: Phones should be banned in schools.
You: What's the main thing you're trying to fix — attention, or something else?
Them: Honestly, the bullying. It doesn't stop at the school gate any more.
You: That's a completely different argument from the one I was about to have.
One question found the real position. A ban may still be the wrong answer, but now the disagreement is about the right thing.
Why this is hard to actually do
Asking feels passive when you want to be persuasive. It is not — but it feels it, and that feeling is what stops people.
There is a real risk of sounding like an interrogation. The fix is tone and genuine interest, not a different question.
You have to actually want the answer. Questions asked as traps are obvious and make everything worse.
What it costs to leave it
- Conversations stay stuck at the surface, so the same arguments recur for years.
- You keep persuading people of things they already agreed with, while the real disagreement goes untouched.
- In business, you solve the problem somebody described rather than the one they have.
Practise it
Reading about conversations is not the same as having one. Splivex puts you on video with somebody who disagrees with you, for twenty minutes, about one question. There is no score and no winner — the only question afterwards is whether either of you changed your mind.
Practise on Splivex →