Excuse me, How Do I Ask a Good Question?

Excuse me, How Do I Ask a Good Question?

Excuse me, How Do I Ask a Good Question? 150 150 Clark

Not like that. Well, at least not usually.

A question without sufficient context is a dangerous question to answer …

What is desired? What is the motivation for asking the question? Who is asking the question? Of whom is the question being asked? What would count as a sufficient answer? What is at stake? What is the relationship between the asker and answerer? ad infinitum

The semantics of the question, the meaning of the question, supervenes heavily upon the answers to those questions above. Not just that, but the perception of the meaning of the question by all parties is subject to each party’s subjective uniqueness.

Speech-Act theorists in the 60’s like John Austin were some of the first to aggressively theorize and study how semantics can vary with pragmatic context. For example, in Austin’s kick-ass book How to Do Things with Words, he asks you to consider the semantics of an utterance like the following:

“The light is so dim in here that I can barely see my book.”

Consider what that utterance means. I don’t know! It depends on contextual factors that my example hasn’t specified yet.

Imagine that I was sitting in a room with someone who is blind and she asked me to tell her what the room is like. I respond, “the light is so dim in here that I can barely see my book” (ignore the irony of talking about seeing to a blind person). Here, the semantics of my utterance are probably simple — I am making an assertion, claiming something about the world, i.e., that the light is dim and I can’t see my book well because of the dim light.

Now imagine that I am sitting with my girlfriend in our living room and she is not blind. She is sitting right next to the light switch dimmer. I turn to her and say “the light is so dim in here that I can barely see my book.”

In this case, I probably not primarily meaning that the light is dim and making it hard to read. That is only the setup. My ‘real’ meaning isn’t semantic, it is pragmatic — I am trying to get her to do something. My ‘subtext’ is asking her to reach over and turn the dimmer switch till the light is brighter. As Austin’s book title implies, I am doing things with words, not just asserting truth claims with words. There is something more to my statement “it’s starting to rain” while I am staring out the window right before we leave for an outing than just me asserting a fact, i.e., that a state of affairs including rain is commencing to obtain. I am probably also (primarily) trying to make sure my girlfriend brings her umbrella so that she doesn’t get wet.

What’s the point? Well, if meaning depends on pragmatic context as well as pure semantic context, then asking a good question depends on framing the question in the proper context.

So, what are the characteristics of a well-contextualized question?


I am going to try to simplify all of that scientific-y-mumbo-jumbo into some prescriptive principles — a veritable ‘top-ten how-to list’ for asking good questions.

1. clear syntactical formulation

This one is easy to describe, but hard to execute. Formulating a syntactically clear question usually entails some of the following.

The question would be classified as a well-formed formula in the respective language. E.g., “I help old people eat” vs. “eat old people help I” — the first statement would be considered a wff in English, whereas the second statement wouldn’t be considered a syntactically correct formula in English, thus not a wff.

So, basically don’t ask questions like Yoda. Use the correct English syntax. Also, if possible use simple sentences instead of complex sentences.

2. beware vague and ambiguous formulations

A vague concept is a technical term in semantics and linguistics meaning that a concept’s ‘extension is deemed lacking in clarity’ (source). If you don’t know what an extension is, then don’t worry about it! All that definition means is that the concept has ‘border-line cases.’ Maybe an example will bring some poignancy to the discussion.

Think about the concept bald. If we had a big tag that we would go around and pin onto people who were bald to identify them as bald, who would we pin? That is, what exactly makes you a bald person? If I have 3,000 hairs left, am I bald? What about 2,000? What about 1,999? etc. Where do we draw a principled and non-arbitrary line to demarcate the bald and the not bald? We can’t. That is conceptual vagueness. Bald is a vague concept.

Ambiguity is also a technical term, but its instantiations are much more diverse. There are many ways to formulate an ambiguous utterance. “My Grandma and daughter went for a walk and then she bought ice cream.” Who is ‘she’ referring to, my Grandma or my daughter? BTW, I don’t have any children of whom I am aware.

“I am trying to access a property of a Model object in my Controller and a collection property in my view but I keep getting an undefined method error for the property.” For which property?

Ok, that was plenty on vagueness and ambiguity. Sometimes they are unavoidable in your questions, but beware of vagueness and ambiguity. Be on guard when asking and answering those types of questions, and make sure that everyone is aware of the vagueness or ambiguity.

3. beware ‘loaded’ and ‘thick’ concepts

Instead of defining these terms, I am going to use ostension — point to some examples.

“What is the right way to write a custom Angular directive?” Well, you have probably loaded your own values into ‘right,’ so it is best to clarify those values explictly. ‘Right’ based on what criteria? What is the context of the directive and the objectives of the implementation? Answers to those questions would ‘unload’ the term ‘right’ so that the question could be answered clearly.

“What is the best programming language to learn?” ‘Best’ programming language in what ways and for whom? ‘Nuff said.

Try to be explicit up front about your values, criteria, and context when using ‘thick’ and ‘loaded’ normative terms within your questions.

4. communicate goals and objectives

Related to this explicit communication of values in number 3, explicit communication of your goals and objectives will allow your audience to answer the question in a way that will help you.

5. align expectations

Related to both number 3 and 4 above, make sure to align expectations between yourself and the audience as best you can. What are you expecting from them and them from you? What are you both expecting from yourselves? Consulting, contract relationships, marriages, and pretty much all ‘back-and-forth’ relationships live and die by how well expectations are managed by both parties.

6. allow for “I don’t know” and “not now”

Similar to asking for and giving feedback, you want to allow for a ‘no-strings-attached’ out for your audience when asking a question. They have to be able to say they don’t know or that they can’t answer you at the moment. If this relationship and respect isn’t there, the feedback or question/answer will always be sub-par.

7. provide necessary domain-space concepts and only the necessary contextual facts needed to understand the question and motivations for the question

This one is probably the most important of the lot, also where most of the literature about ‘asking good questions’ is written. For example, read StackOverflow’s ‘how to ask a good question’ help page to see a focus on the nitty gritty of the question — sections including: ‘introduce the problem before you post any code,’ ‘help others reproduce the problem,’ ‘include all relevant tags,’ ‘proof-read before posting,’ ‘include relevant details like language and platform versions, operating system, relevant software and constraints,’ etc.

Pretty simple, include details and context that is relevant to the question. If in doubt, include the extra details as an ‘appendix section’ at the end of the question.

8. don’t waste time with superfluous niceties

Include details relevant to the question, but don’t waste people’s time with superfluous discussion. No one cares that you are ‘super stoked about your new ergonomic desk setup.’

9. be nice — no one likes helping an asshole

This one cuts against number 8 — be nice to people. Thank them but be cognizant of their time with anything tangential to the original question.

10. ask the right follow-up questions

If the topic is complex, you will probably require discourse and follow-up questioning with you audience, so repeat steps 1-10 for all follow-up questions.

I will be reminding myself of these prescriptions for asking good questions