Arthur Fink — Eyes Open

This post is in draft form, and I’ll welcome your comments as I complete it.  I felt it was best to post it here, so that you comments can be  based on this very specific — if incomplete — draft document.

Whenever I attend a lecture or meeting, I’m usually one of the first to ask questions.  When the meeting is over people often  come up  with thanks  for my “great questions”.  I’m typically surprised that they haven’t asked similar questions of their own, but I’ve also come to understand that my questions do have certain characteristics that make them helpful and appreciated.  Thats good, because I’m a curious person and want to ask more questions, and still more.

Much of my work is also about asking questions.  My coaching practice (I prefer to call it “clarifying”) involves asking powerful questions.  Responding to these helps my clients find insight and clarity.  In helping to make technology more “user friendly”, I’m always asking — or wanting to see — how users try to use a computer system (or other technology), and notice when they get helpful clues and when they get stuck or pointed in an unhelpful direction.  In my general business consulting, I’m asking questions about how an organization or product adds value, about how it is perceived, and about where theory and practice of what’s going on might diverge.  Finally,  in my dance photography, I’m asking visual questions, to see what’s interesting, perhaps visually compelling, and can tell the story of the dance and of my response to it in a visually interesting way.

What makes a “Great Question”?  It’s hard to define, and I’m tempted to compare this task with that of defining pornography.  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart stayed away from that one, but said simply, “I know it when I see it.”  However, I think I can do better than that in defining what makes a great question.

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