As marketers and professionals, our clients rely on us to know things, lots of things. It’s not surprising then, that many of us fall into the trap of feeling that we have to know everything in order to be effective in our jobs and provide value to both clients and colleagues alike.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that none of us can truly know everything, we’re often more inclined to trailblaze our own solutions, spend valuable time in trial-and-error or simply default to wandering through Google and Wikipedia. Worse, we’re scared to admit that we don’t know something for fear that our lack of knowledge or inexperience will demonstrate weakness or inability. This is especially true in B2B, where we deal with complex jargon, concepts and technologies that could be easily understood if we had the courage to ask.

The truth is, asking questions of the people around us doesn’t just help us acquire knowledge, but is also effective in inspiring performance among others and demonstrating leadership. 

So the next time you’re searching for the answer, consider the following strategies for asking the question and you might be surprised what you discover:

Ask questions to find knowledge:

Understanding the various kinds of questions, can help you gain simple knowledge quickly, or find more detailed insight into a problem over a longer period of time.

If you need a simple answer, and want to limit discussion, ask closed questions. Closed questions often require only a “yes” or “no” or other short answer. Closed questions keep the control of the conversation with the questioner, and are most effective for checking facts or details.

If you want to spur conversation, looking for an explanation, or want to gather information based on someone’s experience or opinion, consider asking open questions that begin with words like “how” or “why” or “what.” These kinds of questions give power to the answerer, and allow him or her to share more that you may have initially been asking.

To strike a balance in the conversation, try to ask to or three closed questions for each open question. 

For more insight into asking smart questions, check out this guide to the structure of questions: http://faculty.gvc.edu/ssnyder/121/Goodquestions.html

Ask questions to inspire discovery:

Not all questions are designed to find answers, in fact, good questions often lead not only to additional questions, but surprising new ideas and innovations. Try a few of these tips when you’re looking to spur ideas from your team or find a creative solution to a challenge:

http://www.innovationtools.com/Articles/EnterpriseDetails.asp?a=420

Ask questions to be a good leader:

Questions can be rewarding for both the questioner and the responder. When a colleague or direct report has an issue that needs to be addressed, effective managers can turn to asking effective questions rather than offering their own solutions. Asking the right open questions at the right time not only empowers the responder to share their thinking and opinions – and make them believe their thoughts matter – but it also creates a context for open dialogue and discussion that can head off problems in the future and instill confidence.

For a few tips on using questions in management, check out this post from the Harvard Business Review, http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2009/05/real-leaders-ask.html