- WHAT WE KNOW OF LIFE is only where we have decided to rest with our questioning. We can operate with what we know -- and we can be sure of one thing -- somewhere someone is not resting at that state of knowing. They are researching and questioning -- working on a new discovery.
We approach problems within a constantly changing body of information about the issues at stake. The amount of information that is known by human beings now doubles every five years! Very few people can keep up with the overwhelming avalanche of data that is being generated in any field. And changes within any body of information are so substantial and complex, that even computer databases are out of date almost as quickly as the local library.
This rapid turn-over of knowledge in any field requires a new understanding of information, and the way that questions relate to problems. An out-moded view of information is that it is a static thing ... something that can be contained in an encyclopedia or a library. A better metaphor for today is that information is like a river. In the river of information, ideas and relationships are constantly changing. Dipping into the river one day brings up different perspectives than the next day, because the river has moved on with one more day of experience and thinking.
So it is with questioning. Asking the same question today elicits a different answer than yesterday. What we did not know yesterday, we may know today. Whether we have learned new information or have simply created a solution from our own synthesis and analysis processes, both the question and answer has changed.
- IS ANYTHING ever fully known? You find one piece of information and from that piece of information new questions arise... and you dip into the river again. So it goes on - discovery, new questions, new discovery, and new questions and on and on.
There is power in approaching a problem with the feeling of "I don’t know...". There is also power in allowing doubt into what you think you already know. It doesn’t have to be a threat to one’s status or professionalism. Such an attitude allows the questions to emerge, and new discoveries to begin. Such an attitude opens the door to new possibilities and may invite others with fresh resources and perspectives to create new solutions with you. It opens the door to the river of information that is around the issues at stake, and helps us move into a dynamic relationship with this river and with life.
- WHAT WOULD OUR WORLD be like if every time we were listening to a gripe session, someone would ask, "I wonder what we can do to change that situation?" and then listened carefully for the answers to emerge and then helped that group to begin to work for change? What would it be like for you to do that in your work, family or social context ? Your attention and context might shift from a passive to an active one. You could become a creator, rather than a receiver, of solutions. This shift in perspective is one of the key things that people need in our world just now. And the skill of asking strategic questions is a powerful contribution to making such a shift.
Were you ever taught how to ask questions? Have you ever been taught about asking questions that will really make a difference? Most of us who were brought up in traditional families or in a traditional education system were not. We were certainly never encouraged to ask questions where the answers are not already known.
Traditional schooling was based on asking questions to which the answers were already known: How many wives did Henry VIII have ? What colour is that car ? What is four times five ? We learned that questions have finite and "correct" answers, and there is usually one answer for each question. The wrong answer is punished with a bad grade. The landscape of learning was divided into "right" and "wrong".
This may be a convenient way of running schools and testing people’s capacity for memory in examinations, but it has not been a very empowering learning process for students, or a good preparation for the questions that will be coming up in life.
In some families, children are taught that to ask a question where there is no known answer and is to be avoided because it makes people uncomfortable. Adults or Parents who are supposed to be in charge of things seem to hate saying "I don’t know." It may even be true that asking embarrassing questions, or in any way threatening the power of the adults is a punishable offence. The child learns to stop questioning before the unknowns are revealed.
All this is unfortunate to our times, because today -- in our personal, professional and public lives -- we are surrounded with questions that have no immediately known answers. And if you haven’t been taught how to work with such situation and ask questions, then this can provoke fear and be intimidating.
- LEARNING HOW TO ASK strategic questions is a path of transforming this passive and fearful inquiry into the world into a dynamic exploration of the information around us and the solutions we need. We can "make up" answers to almost any problem.
Take the traditional school. What would it have been like if when the teacher asked "what is four times five?" and when we had said "29". The teacher could say "wrong!" and leave it at that, or she could ask us to explain our thought process and how we got 29. We would have learned about ourselves, our thinking process and we might have discovered mathematics in an active way. The teacher might learn something about how to increase the effectiveness of her teaching methods.
In families that don’t encourage questioning, an adult would rarely follow up an "I don’t know..." with a "How can we find out ?". They are often so absorbed by their embarrassment, that they do not show the child how to find out. But it is important for children to grow up knowing that doubt, uncertainty and unknowing exist in an adult world - a world that they will inherit and need to play their part in creating solutions for.
- NEXT : Shaping a Strategic Question
To SQ Directory The url for this page is
http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/vivian/strat702.htm
A SPECIAL TYPE
OF QUESTION
