That's a good question!

Abstract

All of us have suffered the consequences of expensive, unasked questions both in our professional lives and our personal lives. As technical communicators, we need to ask good questions to elicit information, but many of us lack adequate training in this skill. Add to that the natural reticence of some technical communicators, and it's no wonder that we walk away from SME interviews or department meetings wishing we'd remembered to ask X, Y, or Z. This paper offers information as to why questions are so important, who needs to improve discovery skills, what process you should use to develop your questions, what types of questions are useful, how ta strategize your questions, how to ask good questions, how to handle people answering the questions you ask them, and how to answer questions that are asked of you.