In plenty of meetings half the people present understand nothing, and nobody asks. Not because there are no questions, but because everyone is afraid of being the only one who does not follow.
The result is work proceeding on incomplete understanding, and two months later you discover the whole team was heading in different directions.
Obvious questions expose the biggest problems
The most dangerous questions are the simplest: why are we doing this? Who exactly is the customer? How will we know this worked?
Those questions look naive, which is why nobody asks them. And when someone does, silence follows — which is a sign the answer does not exist, not that the question was naive.
I consider a large part of my work with companies to be asking the obvious questions nobody inside dared to ask.
What does a stupid answer look like?
- Mockery. "How do you not know that?" — the fastest way to guarantee nobody asks again.
- Jargon. Answering in technical language meant to look expert rather than to communicate.
- The vague answer. General talk that looks like an answer while saying nothing.
- Answering confidently about something you are unsure of. The most dangerous, because decisions get built on wrong information.
"I don't know" is a respectable answer
In this field particularly, things change fast and nobody knows everything. Someone who says "I don't know, I'll check and come back to you" builds far more trust than someone who answers everything instantly.
I see this in client work every day: a client forgives you for not knowing, and does not forgive you for saying something wrong confidently and building a decision on it.
How do you get people to ask?
If you run the team or the meeting, the responsibility is yours, not theirs:
- Ask first yourself. When the leader asks a simple question, it gives everyone else permission.
- Do not ask "any questions?" — that is always answered with silence. Ask: "which part is least clear?"
- Thank people for the question before answering. And if the question exposed a gap on your side, say so openly.
- Open a private channel. Many people will ask in a message and not in front of everyone.
Asking is a skill too
There is a difference between a question that stops work and one that moves it. A good question is specific, and it shows what you have understood so far.
Instead of "I don't understand anything," say: "I understand we're targeting this segment; what isn't clear to me is how we'll measure the result." That makes answering easier and the conversation faster.
If you are still learning
Fear of asking is the biggest brake on anyone entering the field. People spend weeks searching alone for something someone could have answered in two minutes.
Ask, but make an effort first: search, try, then ask a specific question. That approach makes people want to help you, and makes you learn faster from both.
And in your work with clients
The same principle applies to your relationship with a client. The client is usually not a specialist, and asks questions that look obvious to you.
How you answer that question shapes the whole relationship. An answer that explains simply and respectfully creates trust; a condescending one makes the client stop asking — and then be shocked by the result and upset.
The questions that should be asked in every project
There are five questions I ask at the start of any piece of work, all of which look obvious and none of which get asked:
- Whose problem are we solving exactly? And can that person be described in detail.
- What happens if we do nothing? That clarifies whether the project is necessary or a luxury.
- How will we know we succeeded? With a number and a timeframe.
- What are we not going to do? Boundaries prevent the project bloating.
- Who decides if we disagree? That prevents months of deadlock.
Those five take half an hour and save months of work in the wrong direction.
And the hardest question: why?
The most powerful question in any meeting is a repeated "why?" When someone says we must be on a new platform, ask why. If the answer is that a competitor did it, ask why again.
After three rounds you reach the real reason — and usually you find it is not sufficient, or that there is a simpler and cheaper route to the same goal.
In short
There are no stupid questions. There are only environments that frighten people out of asking, and answers that mock instead of clarifying.
If you run a team, ask the obvious questions yourself and reward whoever asks. If you are learning, ask after trying. And if you deal with a client, explain in language they understand.
Most of the big problems I have seen in companies started with a simple question nobody asked at the right time.
This is part of a series on working in digital marketing — which also covers the jobs in the field, and the price of proper work.