You Need To Ask More Questions

You do. Seriously. For some reason, there is a stigma around asking questions as if it makes you sound stupid no matter what, and smart people never ask questions. This is simply not true. In the professional world, many people (myself included) would rather sit down and answer questions ahead of time than review work with errors or approaches that could have been prevented or modified beforehand. Today, I’m going to take a moment to share with you why you should ask questions in order to get ahead in the professional world.

Before anything gets taken out of context, let’s get one thing straight there IS such a thing as asking too many questions. That threshold will depend on the context of the situation. Is the other person busy? Can you Google it faster for a reliable answer? Does the answer need to come from the other person? Will you need to research it anyways? These are some of the many things to consider when asking others for their time to answer your questions. The smartest people that I have ever met were not afraid to ask questions when needed, but when they did, they were always sure to analyze the situation and ask the right questions in the right context (instead of asking tons of questions to get information). Like many things, proper inquiry is a learned skill that requires practice and critical thinking. Hopefully we can improve those skills today.

Why Ask Questions?

While there are many reasons to ask questions depending on the context, I’m going to boil it down to this phrase today: 

Asking questions can save time, time is money, therefore asking questions can save money.

In the professional world, you could be responsible for meeting with a client, preparing a set of important financial documents, creating a sales contract, or a wide variety of things that involve communication with and review by other people. These other people that you are bound to interact with have experience that you can leverage to do a better job. Especially in circumstances where you are directly reporting to someone who is ultimately in charge of what you are working on, it is most often worth your time to ask questions while (or before) you are doing the work to avoid questions later. I am one of the people who is responsible for reviewing and approving the work of others as a part of my day-to-day responsibilities, and I go out of my way to make sure that they know they can ask me questions, so long as they do it efficiently. I do this because in many cases, having them do everything on their own and having me come in to fix the mistakes (or worse, tell them to fix the mistakes after I see them for the first time in their submission) takes far more time and resources than them sitting down for ten to thirty minutes to talk about the deliverables. By taking the small amount of time to ask a question, my employee saves more time (and therefore, more money) on the job, and I really appreciate that. 

BUT REMEMBER, the person you are talking to will have their own obligations that you might not know about. There could be another job that is more pressing than yours which requires their attention, they may be in meetings all day and can’t respond or may be the type of person who cannot be interrupted when performing certain tasks. Keep these things in mind when doing the cost-benefit analysis of asking questions because generally, the other person’s time is worth at least as much (if not more than) yours. 

Whether it’s saving your boss sometime in the review process or saving yourself a little bit of time with a new Excel trick that can be used repeatedly, asking questions can be a total game changer for many young professionals. By taking the time to understand how asking your question can benefit you, the person you’re asking, and any other relevant parties, you are making the first step toward a more efficient process. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! It really means a lot that you took the time to learn from me. I’d like to challenge you to think about ways you can ask (or be asked) questions at your place of work so time, effort, and money can be saved!