Questioning Your Questions

Many schoolexperiences mislead you to believe that answering a question is the important part of learning. In fact, answering a question is the easy part. For most problems in the business world, the difficult and creative acts are generating the questions- and formulating a strategy for getting the answers.

Once the questions and strategy are set, the rest is simply legwork. As a future consumer of information technology and services, you will benefit from being able to ask good questions and effectively obtain answers to them. It is probably the single most important behavior you can learn. Because of the rapid change of technology, you will constantly be required to learn about new IS alternatives and how you can apply them in your business. Perhaps you've heard that "there is no such thing as a bad question." This statement is nonsense.

There are billions of bad questions, and you will be better off if you learn not to ask them. Questions can be bad in three ways: They can be irrelevant, dead, or asked of the wrong source. Consider the first way. If you know the subject and if you're paying attention, you can avoid asking irrelevant questions. One of the goals of this text is to teach you about IT and IS so that you can avoid asking irrelevant technology questions.

A dead question is one that leads to nowhere-it provides no insight into the subject. Here's an example of a dead question: "Is the material on How a Computer Works going to be on the test?" The answer will tell you whether you need to study that topic for the exam, but it won't tell you why. The answer will help you in school, but it won't help you use MIS on the job

Instead, ask questions like, "What is the purpose of the section on how a computer works?" "Why are we studying it?" or "How will it help me use MIS in my career?" These are good questions because they go somewhere. Your professor may respond, "From that discussion you'll learn how to save money because you'll know whether to buy your staff more memory or a faster CPU."

Possibly, you won't understand that answer; in that case, you can ask more questions that will lead you to understand how it pertains to your use of MIS. Or, your professor may say, "Well, I think that section is a waste of time, and I told the author that in a recent email." From there, you can ask your professor why she thinks it's a waste of time, and you can wonder why the author would write something that is a waste of time. Maybe the author and your professor have different points of view.

Such musings are excellent because they lead you to more learning. The third way questions can be bad is that they are asked of the wrong source. Information technology questions fall into three types: "What is it?" "How can I use it?" and "Is it the best choice?" The first type asks for a simple definition. You can easily Google or Bing the answers to such questions. Hence, you ought not to ask "What is it?" questions of valuable or expensive sources; you are wasting your money and their time if you

do. And, when you ask such a question, you appear unprepared because you didn't take the time to find the easy answer. The next type of question, "How can I use it?" is harder. Answering that question requires knowledge of both technology and your business. Although you can research that question over the Internet, you need knowledge to relate it to your present circumstance.

In a few years, this is the sort of question that you will be expected to answer for your organization. It's also the type of question you might ask an expert. Finally, the most difficult type of question is, "Is it the best choice for our company or situation?" Answering this type of question requires the ability to judge among alternatives according to appropriate criteria.

These are the kinds of questions you probably do want to ask an expensive source. Notice, too, that only "What is it?" questions have a verifiably correct answer. The next two types are questions of judgment. No answer can be shown to be correct, but some answers are better than others. As you progress in your educational career, you should be learning how to discern the quality of judgment and evaluative answers. Learn to question your questions

Discussion Questions

1. Using your own words, what is the difference between a good question and a bad one?

2. What types of questions waste time?

3. What types of questions are appropriate to ask your professor?

4. How do you know when you have a good answer to a question? Consider the three types of questions described here in your answer.

5. Under what circumstances would you ask a question to which you already know the answer?

6. Suppose you have 15 minutes with your boss's boss's boss. What kinds of questions are appropriate in such an interview? Even though you don't pay money to meet with this person, explain how this is an expensive source.

7. Evaluate the quality of questions 1 through 5. Which are the best questions? What makes one better than the other? If you can, think of better ways of asking these questions, or even better questions.