You’ve probably heard that there is no such thing as a stupid question.

I beg to differ!

Being a contrarian is nothing new for me, but examining such “common wisdom” is all a part of communication strategy. If the purpose of a question is to obtain information, then there are certainly questions that not only do not obtain, but in fact can obscure vital information. Unfortunately, many of us learn the art of asking questions simply through example. Asking new or original questions can be seen as risky, while asking certain questions that we have seen asked and answered before seems wise.

When I was in outside sales acting as a distributor for different product lines, the ubiquitous purchasing agent question was always, “Do you stock these items?” The answer was, “Absolutely NOT!” but such an answer without careful explanation would have caused problems. Stocking inventory is expensive, requiring lots of overhead in terms of warehousing, administration, and taxation. Additionally, all this added expense and overhead will still reach a single point of failure when an item is not stocked because of inherent limits on space. If I prioritize my stock and inventory based on commonly used items, I become a commodities broker without a well thought-out system for dealing with unusual requests.

Instead, what any customer might rightly wish to know is, “If I place an order, can it be filled in a timely fashion?” The answer can be an enthusiastic YES even without local inventory, given the ability to ship overnight from almost anywhere. It’s efficient and relatively cheap, and it works for a variety of situations. Why would a customer who is okay with a one to two week lead time want to pay my overhead to stock? Why would a customer who absolutely must have something fast want to risk me not having a way to fulfill an order because I only had space to stock everything except what they needed? As such, “Do you stock these items?” is a dumb question that assumes only one correct answer is possible.

Another perennial favorite of mine is a question asked by those hiring salespeople. “Do you have a record of consistently exceeding quota?” Mega-dumb question. If you consistently exceed a quota, might one presume the quota-bar has been set too low? “Quota” doesn’t begin to address core concerns such as profitability, stability, or frankly even gross sales dollars. Would you rather hire a guy selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door who sells six or eight $15 subscriptions who doubled his quota of three or four instead of a guy running a million-dollar territory who simply met quota or even missed it by 10%? Yet hiring managers have heard this question asked for so long, they feel compelled to continue the tradition, no matter how much of a failure it proves to be. The turn-over of most sales organizations should serve as prima-facie evidence that this question should be scrapped and replaced.

For those who are answering questions, it pays to give thought to the root concerns at the heart of common questions. For those asking questions, it pays to not assume only one answer works.   Better questions lead to better answers… and better communication.

Jared A. Chambers