The question is the answer.

Smart questions are essential technology for those who venture on to the Information Highway.

Without strong questioning skills, you are just a passenger on someone else's tour bus. You may be on the highway, but someone else is doing the driving.

Without strong questioning skills, you are unlikely to exercise profitable search strategies which allow you to cut past the Info-Glut Info-Garbage and Info-Glitz which all too often impede the search for Insight.

Sometimes this New Information Landscape seems more like Eliot's Wasteland than a library, more like a yard sale than a gold mine. The weaker the questioning and learning skills, the less value one is likely to discover or uncover.

Prime Questions
Why? How? Which?

Why?
Why do things happen the way they do?
This question requires analysis of cause-and-effect and the relationship between variables. It leads naturally to problem-solving (the How question) or to decision-making (the Which is best? question).

Why does the sun fall each day? Why does the rain fall? Why do some people throw garbage out their car windows? Why do some people steal? Why do some people treat their children badly? Why can't I ask more questions in school?


How?
How could things be made better?
This question is the basis for problem-solving and synthesis. Using questions to pull and change things around until a new, better version emerges.

How? is the inventor's favorite question. How is the tool which fixes the broken furnace and changes the way we get cash from a bank. How inspires the software folks to keep sending us upgrades and hardware folks to create faster chips. How is the question which enables the suitor to capture his or her lover's heart. How is the reformer's passion and the hero's faith.

Which is best?
Which do I select?
This question requires thoughtful decision-making - a reasoned choice based upon explicit (clearly stated) criteria and evidence.

Questioning Toolkit

Essential Questions
Elaborating Questions
Clarification Questions
Irrelevant Questions
Hypothetical Questions
Unanswerable Questions
Strategic Questions
Provocative Questions
Telling Questions
Divergent Questions
Probing Questions
Inventive Questions
Planning Questions
Testing Questions