How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
How to ask questions wisely? - this is a question for which it turns out - there are no simple answers. Both at work, in life and on social networks, I have often encountered stupid questions for help. The typical question I'm going to focus on is "It does not work, what do you do?" A simple question, short but totally unhelpful, neither for the questioner nor for who is to help.
How to ask questions? A guide for those who are resistant!
They want to get help, ask a question, they should be properly constructed. Many times at work I wrote to clients to give more details what does not work, because (here my favorite quote): My glass ball was in the other pants.
People need help sometimes and it would be advisable to help them, but sometimes it will be more useful, more information about what they want to get help for. For example, someone has broken a computer, and a person asking a question and waiting for help does not know what happened and does not know how to deal with it. A person who is not very technical will not know what has happened, therefore he is trying to get help. Unfortunately, in most cases, people are not clairvoyants, and often a little information is useful. What did you do to him? Have you noticed disturbing symptoms, other hardware or software operation? Maybe you used something that makes the problem different from everyday?
Providing a large amount of information will always help you solve the problem more than dry "Does not work".
Why?
Recently I often got into mail problems that e-mails are not delivered to the recipient, they do not even leave the server. In this case, I always ask a flagship question: "Can I ask for more information?". For example, whether they use a mail client, webmail, receive verbs or attachments in the message body - it will allow you to verify the causes of problems without access to the server. Of course, you can search, you can spend hours on it, but it is not easier to share the maximum amount of information we have?
Same as in the case of a car. We go to the workshop and say that the car is driving badly or is in trouble and leave the car on the site? Of course we do not do it! Let us know what has happened recently with the car, if something is knocking or something is knocking. The last symptoms that happen with the car - we give the man in the workshop and we expect help. The same when we go to the doctor. Nobody comes into the office and tells the doctor that he is sick - heal me. First he gives what hurts him, whether he is weak, or something he took recently for medication, did something (eg: he did exercises and hurt his shoulder). At that time, the doctor or mechanic knows where to start analyzing the problem and will find a solution sooner.
And how is it in the IT industry?
In the case of the IT industry, these terms of cooperation do not exist magically. You are an IT specialist - you should know. I must admit that I do not see the difference between a car service, a doctor and an IT specialist when analyzing a problem. They use their knowledge to rectify the problem that arose. Any, even stupid information may turn out to be a milestone that will save hours or days of unnecessary work and help solve the problem.
Use Case
I had an interesting case lately, when the client reported that he does not receive an answer from his client and expects help. Of course, he did not provide any information, not even the e-mail address of the recipient, and I admit that on average I was able to see through hundreds of entries in the logs in order to verify the problem. I just asked if she was getting back information. It turned out that he received them, but he did not know what it was.
As it turned out? He made a typo in the recipient's address and the recipient's mail returned a simple message: "There is no such user". I've advised him to verify that this is definitely a valid email address - and what turned out to be? Indeed, he made a typo. I understand that he could not read the information himself, which I often have problems, but if he wrote everything he knows right away - the problem would be solved by means of one message, not several. He would save both my and my time.
In the community
I also often find a discussion in groups on Facebook. People are looking forward to help, and when someone is just as helpless (for me, waiting for help on "priv" is cheeky, in the end it's a forum, not a search engine for free help) that can give more information right away, instead of playing cat and mouse - it it starts with the shit and sending comments like "you do not know yourself and you do not want to help, do not say anything". Maybe he wanted to help, but he does not intend to write to someone, maybe he will not be able to solve the problem, but he will help to get information for someone else?
Do not be afraid to ask questions, but let's try to make sure that the questions contain all possible information that will help you diagnose the problem faster. I found a study many years ago, where it was explained how to ask questions wisely. Until then, I will not copy and paste this study, but I invite you to read. Over time, I will try to develop this topic with new examples and ideas on how to improve communication and "how to ask questions wisely". Look also at my other guides, with time there will be many more.