Must Questions Always Be Answered?

When you’re asked a question, what do you do?

You have two options:

1. You can either answer.
2. Or not answer.

Right?

I recently observed a Scrum Master feel pressured to answer every question hurled his way by his team members. To offer solutions to every problem raised. Even though many of the questions and problems:

• Were not related to his role and responsibilities as Scrum Master and/or
• Could’ve been answered or solutioned by the team members themselves if they wanted to.

When I’m asked a question, my natural inclination too, is to want to answer the question.

I used to default automatically to one of three options in the following order when choosing to answer a question:

• Option #1: State what I know to be the correct answer.
• Option #2: Make up an answer when I don’t know.
• Option #3: Admit that I don’t know the answer.

Option #2 was my go-to option when my kids were young and believed everything I said. As they grew older and wiser, they would pause, reflect on my “answer”, look me in the eye and call me on it with, “You’re talking shit dad!” – Busted!

Option #3 was my least favourite option because it wasn’t an answer. It made me feel scared, embarrassed, inadequate, and vulnerable. I would resist admitting I didn’t know, preferring to make up an answer instead. When that happens, my wife would chastise me with, “Why is it so hard for you to say I don’t know!”. Why indeed!?

What if you choose not to answer the question?

That would add 2 more options when we’re asked a question:

• Option #4: Don’t answer.
• Option #5: Answer another question.

Option #5 is often used by politicians. What do you get when you ask a politician a question they do not want to answer?

You get a rambling run-on monologue on the virtues and vicissitudes of everything but the question at hand. It’s as if they were answering a different question.

Politicians are masters of evading, avoiding, deflecting, and fogging unwanted questions. Even simple closed ended yes/no questions don’t get a simple direct yes or no. Instead they become a platform for them to launch into an unrelated diatribe on their political opponents. It’s kinda like a sport with them. Leaving reporters dumbfounded with their so-called “answers” and out of time to ask for clarification. One of my all-time favourite political non-answers to a question was Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s response in 2002 to a reporter’s question “What kind of proof do you need (to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to terrorism)?”

Chrétien’s answer to the question was, “A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.”

Politicians clearly don’t answer questions they don’t want to answer or don’t know how to answer.

With Option #4, you choose not to answer at all. That could be for a variety of reasons:

1. You have something to hide or protect.
2. It’s a rhetorical question not expecting an answer.
3. The person already knows the answer and is just looking for a sounding board, not an answer.
4. You have an answer but, you want others to answer the question.

As an Agile Coach, reason #4 is my rationale for not always answering questions asked of me.

If I sense there’s a growth opportunity for others by me deliberately not answering the question, then I might ask:

⁃ “What do you think the answer is?”

⁃ “I don’t know, how about we figure it out together?”

As a coach, I don’t need to show how smart I am by answering all their questions or offering them solutions to all their problems. I don’t want to rob them of their struggle. Instead, I want to enable them to grow by having them attempt to answer their own questions. And often, their answers will be better than my answers!

So, now whenever I’m asked a question, I no longer default to answering it.