During the last few years, I’ve regularly led reflection groups. The idea was to invite a group to find a moment of rest from the busy times while creating the space for them to think and be curious.

It usually takes a bit of time for the group to get used to focusing on asking questions instead of firing suggestions and ideas.

The past decades have trained people to provide solutions. It is the prolongation of the learning in school where the teacher was focused on teaching pupils by having them answer questions. Organizations took this up to reduce complaints that were described as problems. They hoped that it would enable people to address existing problems. However, without a clear description of the context, complaints were confused with problems to be addressed.

In my groups, as participants become used to the approach, it becomes visible that the questions they ask trigger new thinking. For those presenting a subject just as much as those asking the questions.

Questions for example become options and approaches the person presenting a subject had not seen. Sometimes they help the person see a blind spot or to receive the question they would have avoided on their own.

Something else the participants learn is how questions they ask will sometimes lead to surprising answers. Such answers can show how the advice they would have wanted to give would not have helped at all.

Our conversations often allow finding the question that needed to be asked. That is the question the person presenting the subject needed to ask as well as the one he needed to hear.

It helps to see how a lot of problems are created by trying to answer an issue that wasn’t well presented. But the problem is less that the problem statement may not have been perfect or the question not clear. It is the habit of assuming that they are clear and the right one.