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Creativity tip 49 – Creativity and Questioning
Have you noticed an ever increasing tendency for existing ways of doing things to produce less and less of the results and value they once did? This means we are constantly having to find new and better ways of doing those things. Have you also noticed your challenges getting more and more complex? This may lead you to think that your top challenge should be that of enhancing creativity within yourself and within others – so that all your other challenges can be addressed more effectively.
Our ability to be creative depends upon our capacity to think, which in turn depends upon our ability to question not only our practices, but also our beliefs and assumptions. We need to question the limits of our thinking. It is through this manner of questioning that we are able to rethink our thinking. Thus, the quality of our questions determines the quality of our creativity.
Our capacity to ask creative questions is neither a natural talent nor an in-born trait but a learned competency, based on motivation, know-how and experience. So, improvement is always possible. (See also last years’ Newsletter 40)
So what are the basics of improving creative questioning?
As a practice, creative questioning requires us to have a sense of adventure, to take risks, and to push into the unknown. You have probably heard this quote from Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." So having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions is a precursor which allows us to ask usefully naïve questions.
Try out these three steps:
1. Get in the habit of carrying a notebook with you at all times. Use this notebook to record your observations, questions, reflections, insights, and musings.
2. Pay attention to the types of questions you and others ask during meetings, phone calls, or conversations of any kind. Notice the answers each question generates. Become aware of question and answer patterns. Keep in mind that naïve questions are born out of curiosity, and as such encourage exploration. If you are not travelling uncharted waters, you probably aren’t asking naïve questions. Record the best naïve questions. Listen to the questions children ask, and the answers they give.
3. Start asking questions of yourself and then of others. Ask simple questions, that increase your understanding, that challenge the way you think. Keep your questions non-judgmental, open and brief. Observe what happens when questions are judgmental, dead-ended, or complex. Ask who, what, where, when, how, and why questions. Ask ‘what if’ or ‘compare and contrast’ questions. Pose option type questions. Be sure to vary the way in which you ask questions. Notice the type of questions you ask and the types you don’t. Notice the answers you get and where they take you. Record your observations in your notebook. See below for a list of types of question that you can use to help broaden your approach.
A Technique for creative questioning practice
You could try the following creative questioning practice when you are: facing a difficult decision; struggling with a challenging problem; engaging in a complex task; curious about a topic; or when you are absolutely sure that you have the answer you’re looking for. At the top of a blank page in your notebook, jot down a key word or a short statement that captures the essence of the decision, problem, task or topic under consideration. Next, write out a list of 100 questions that come to mind as you think about your topic. Write quickly, ignoring spelling, grammar, and repeated questions. Piggyback questions onto each other. Ask questions of your questions. Write all 100 questions without interruption. Be aware of the temptation during this process to start recording responses to your questions. Avoid this temptation and record questions only. Generally speaking, it is in the latter half of your list that you will uncover the most interesting and provocative questions, that is, questions which provide unexpected insights and new perspectives.
Once you have finished your list, put it aside for a while and pay attention to the ideas that percolate to the surface of your consciousness. The purpose of this practice is to prime your creativity, to bring forth unexamined solutions and insights. As new ideas and questions come to mind record them in your notebook. Within the next 2 to 24 hours review your list. Select those questions which are most interesting to you. Use them as a focus point for further exploration of your topic. Contemplate them, discuss them. Use them as starting points for repeating this exercise from new perspectives. Use them as the basis for researching the literature. Keep track of your insights and learnings as well as any new questions which emerge.
In the process of practising creative questioning, it is quite natural to develop the habit of asking the same kinds of questions over and over. To avoid this problem and to build your repertoire of question types, do the 100 question exercise with a partner. Begin as usual with a topic statement and a listing of questions. Once you have written 10 questions, switch lists with your partner. Read your partner’s list and add 10 more questions of your own on their list. Exchange lists and read the questions your partner added to your list. Add 10 more questions to this list. Continue exchanging lists until you have 100 questions on each. Discuss the questions with your partner. This activity can also be done with several people by passing the lists from one person to another, acting as an excellent exercise for collaborative exploration of a topic.
If creativity originates with a question, then it is the art of asking naïve questions that leads to enhanced creativity. Experiment with the practice of creative questioning and construct variations of your own until you discover what works best for you.
Which questions matter?
It’s generally accepted that most important thinking requires one of these three:
1. WHY? Example: 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).
2. HOW? Example: 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.
3. WHICH? Example: Which do I select?
This question requires thoughtful decision-making or a reasoned choice based upon explicit (clearly stated) criteria and evidence.
Types of questions
Try some of these to expand your repertoire:
Essential Questions
Essential questions probe the deepest issues confronting us… those complex and baffling matters which elude simple answers: life; death; marriage; identity; purpose; betrayal; honour; integrity; courage; temptation; faith; leadership; addiction; invention; inspiration. These are questions which touch our hearts and souls, are central to our lives and help to define what it means to be human.
Subsidiary Questions
These are questions which combine to help us build answers to our Essential Questions. Big questions spawn families of smaller questions which lead to insight. The more skilful we become at formulating and then categorising Subsidiary Questions, the more success we will have constructing new knowledge. All of the question categories listed and explained below are really types of Subsidiary Questions.
Elaborating Questions
Elaborating Questions extend and stretch the import of what we are finding. They take the explicit and see where it might lead. They also help us to go below the surface to implicit (unstated) meanings. The question to get at the meaning between the lines, for example, What are the implied or suggested meanings?
Clarification Questions
Clarification Questions convert fog and smog into meaning. A collection of facts and opinions does not always make sense by itself. Defining words and concepts is central to this clarification process. Examining the coherence and logic of an argument, an article, an essay, an editorial or a presentation is fundamental. Determining the underlying assumptions is vital. “Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.” Frank Moore Colby
Irrelevant Questions
Irrelevant Questions take us far afield, distract us and threaten to divert us from the task at hand. And that is their beauty! For who is to say what is irrelevant. Answers often don’t appear where we might look logically. The creation of new knowledge almost always requires some wandering off course. The more we cling to the coastline, the less apt we are to find the New World. As Melville so dramatically pointed out in Moby Dick, “the search for truth requires the courage to venture out and away from the familiar and the known …”
Irreverent Questions
Irreverent Questions explore territory which is ‘off-limits’ or taboo. They challenge far more than conventional wisdom. They hold no respect for authority or institutions or myths. They leap over, under or through walls and rules and regulations. It often happens that today's heretic - the one with the courage, the tenacity and the brash conviction to question the way things are ‘sposed to be’ - often turns out to be a prophet of sorts. The Emperor's New Clothes is the classic story showing what happens when Irreverent Questions are discouraged and obedience, subservience and compliance are prized. The emperor parades naked. People can cling blindly to old beliefs.
Hypothetical Questions
Hypothetical Questions are questions designed to explore possibilities and test relationships. They usually project a theory or an option out into the future, wondering what might happen if .... and are especially helpful when trying to decide between a number of choices or when trying to solve a problem.
Unanswerable Questions
They serve like boundary stones, helping to tell us when we have pushed insight to its outer limits. When exploring essential questions (some of which are unanswerable in the ultimate sense) we may have to settle for ‘casting light’ upon them. When wrestling with these Unanswerable Questions we may never find the Truth, but we may illuminate, and so extend the level of understanding and reduce the intensity of the darkness. We must remember that this reality is perfectly acceptable and is no signal to stop searching and thinking.
“The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you ‘come to terms with’ only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will.” Ingrid Bengis.
Strategic Questions
Closely associated with the Planning Questions (see later), Strategic Questions arise during the actual hunting, gathering, inferring, synthesising and ongoing questioning process. Strategic Questions focus on ‘Ways to Make Meaning’. Be prepared to switch from tool to tool and strategy to strategy while passing through unfamiliar territory eg, What type of question would help me most with this task?
Provocative Questions
Provocative Questions are meant to push, challenge and throw conventional wisdom off balance. They give free rein to doubt, disbelief and scepticism. “The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.” Walter Lippmann
Telling Questions
Telling Questions lead us right to the target. They are built with such precision that they provide sorting and sifting during a gathering or discovery process. They focus the investigation so that we gather only the very specific evidence and information we require, only those facts which ‘cast light upon’ or illuminate the main question at hand.
Divergent Questions
Divergent Questions use existing knowledge as a base from which to ‘kick off’ like a swimmer making a turn. They move more logically from the core of conventional knowledge and experience than irrelevant questions. They are more carefully planned to explore territory which is adjacent to that which is known or understood. For instance if we limit our thoughts to successes, we may miss out on the chance to avoid other people's mistakes. Sometimes we learn more by thinking about the opposite of our main target. New ideas are rarely sitting waiting for us in obvious places. The ability to freely associate related topics and questions greatly increases the odds of making important discoveries.
Probing Questions
Probing Questions take us below the surface to the ‘heart of the matter’. They operate somewhat like the archaeologist's tools - the brushes which clear away the surface dust and the knives which cut through the accumulated grime and debris to reveal the outlines and ridges of some treasure. “We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.” Desmond Morris.
Inventive Questions
Inventive Questions turn our findings inside out and upside down. They distort, modify, adjust, rearrange, alter, twist and turn the bits and pieces we have picked up along the way until we can shout "Aha!" and proclaim the discovery of something brand new. It’s the ‘What does all this information really mean?’ or the ‘What is still missing?’ or the ‘What needs to be eliminated or reversed or modified in order to make a better sense of it?’
Planning Questions
Planning Questions lift us above the action of the moment and require that we think about how we will structure our endeavour, where we will look and what resources we might use such as time and information. They help us develop a comprehensive plan of action.
If we were sailing on an old square-masted ship, we would pass off the wheel and the lines to team-mates in order to climb to the crow's nest - a lofty perch from which we could look ‘over the horizon’.
Organising Questions
Organising Questions make it possible to structure any findings into categories which will allow us to construct meaning. Without these structures we suffer from ‘hodge podge’ and ‘mish mash’ - information collections akin to trash heaps and landfills, large in mass, lacking in meaning. The less structure we create in the beginning, the harder it becomes later to find patterns and relationships in the fragments or the collection of bits and pieces.
Metaphorical Questions
Metaphors can be powerful shortcuts to instant and memorable understanding. They can jolt the brain into new ways of understanding. They evoke vivid images and allow us to see things from a new perspective and so are useful tools for creative problem solving. Use metaphorical questions to explore complex ideas and think outside the box. If my next question was an animal, what question would it be?
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