Clean questions

Clean questions are a proven method that helps remove emotion from the questioning process by using neutral, open-ended prompts.

To illustrate this, let's consider two questions that aim to understand the same problem but are framed differently.

Imagine a computer system has experienced a serious outage (apparently this does happen occasionally) and you need to understand why it happened. At some stage, you'll need to speak to someone who supports the system. How you approach that conversation will determine how successful you are in understanding the problem and how it occurred.

Let's look at a question that doesn't use the clean questioning approach first. A bold start might be.

"We've had another outage, why didn't we catch it?"

This style frames the problem in terms of a history of failures and launches into an accusatory question that implies blame. In contrast, a clean question might look like this.

"What kind of issue caused the outage?"

This shifts the emphasis away from blame and toward gaining a genuine understanding of the problem.

Clean questions are designed to be neutral, avoiding assumptions, preconceptions, or biases. They act as open-ended prompts that allow the person being questioned to express their thoughts and experiences without feeling judged. This helps them think through problems in a structured way and, done well, results in better understanding for both the interviewer and interviewee.

This style of questioning is valuable because it exposes assumptions and encourages open examination of the subject. It builds empathy, encourages open conversation, and avoids "leading the witness," which can result in the questioner's own assumptions influencing the direction of the conversation.

To use clean questions effectively, curiosity is key. By following threads to create a chain of questioning you can develop a detailed understanding of the subject. However, this only works if you avoid imposing your own solutions and resist jumping to conclusions.

Using the same language, phrases and terms as the people being questioned, or "mirroring" in the jargon, helps to build empathy and reduces the cognitive load caused when mentally translating between terms.

Allowing people time to think, process and organise their thoughts is important too; don't be afraid to leave a silence as this can give an interviewee space to think through their responses and prompt them to open up – most people hate a pause in conversation.

Avoid using questions that ask "why". These can feel accusatory as they come with the implication that there is something wrong with the situation or an alternate path may have been better. For example, "why didn't we spot the problem earlier?" implies that the problem should have been spotted earlier and could result in an explanation that is obfuscated by self-justification rather than focussed on unearthing the facts.

As a part of the conversation, use active listening technique to show your interest and use open follow-on prompts, such as "go on?", "what kind of thing is that?", "have you seen that before?" and" what else?" These prompts are powerful for probing beyond a superficial overview of the problem and can allow a greater understanding to emerge.

Here's a list of clean question templates to prompt you sider how you might use clean questions next time you need to understand a new domain by interviewing.

Events and Experiences

• "When did you notice <x>?"
• "How do you know <x>?"
• "What happened before/after <x>?"
• "What did you notice about <x>?"
• "Is <x> something we've seen before?"
• "What's the relationship between <x> and <y>?"

Definitions

• "Can you explain <x> to me?"
• "What kind of <x> is that?"
• "How would you describe <x>?"
• "Where is <x>?"

Goals and Direction

• "What would <x> working well look like?"
• "What's stopping <x> from happening?"
• "What would need to change to make <x> happen?"
• "What would you like to see happen with <x>?"

Uncertainty and Complexity

• "What's behind <x>?"
• "How do we know <x>?"
• "Is there a pattern to <x>?"
• "Is <x> like anything we've seen before?"