How to ask good questions

Our goal is going to be to ask questions about technical concepts that are easy to answer. I often have somebody with me who has a bunch of knowledge that I’d like to know too, but they don’t always know exactly how to explain it to me in the best way.

If I ask a good series of questions, then I can help the person explain what they know to me efficiently and guide them to telling me the stuff I’m interested in knowing. So let’s talk about how to do that!

By Julia Evans.

Or, “How to ask questions so that you get good answers”.

My favourite: “Ask questions that show what’s not obvious”, with the goal of unearthing hidding knowledge and assumptions.

Editorial note: I didn’t properly read this article for a long time, because I didn’t take the time to actually read it actively, not just hurriedly to go and read more things. Before you can even ask questions, you need to make space for your own thoughts. And for me, the “only” way to do this is to do nothing else. No listening to music, no news/aggregator/social media/…, and usually also no one else around. Walking away from the computer often helps, as does writing things down. In this specific case, sleeping and then only reading the article in the morning did the trick.