Chris Fenning explains why context matters when asking questions. Instead of asking "how many people are coming to lunch," specify "next week's team meeting lunch" so you get the right answer.
How to ask questions, tip number 5: provide context for the question. If you're starting a conversation and you want to open with a question, make sure you provide context for the topic and context for the question specifically before you ask the question. If you don't do this, you run the risk of getting an answer that relates to something different. If you want to be talking about, let's say, next week's team meeting, And you want to ask about the number of people that are coming for lunch, you should say, in next week's team meeting, how many people are coming for lunch? If you don't say that, if you just ask, well, how many people are coming for lunch? The person you're asking might be thinking about lunch today or a different meeting or a different event and give you the wrong number. Without that simple piece of context, the person that you're asking isn't well set up to deliver you an accurate answer to the question that you need. So how do you provide context? Well, it's simple. At the beginning of the conversation, before you ask the question, name the topic, name the thing that you're going to talk about, or include that information specifically in the question. So if we wanted to find out the number of people coming for lunch next week, we wouldn't just say, how many people are coming for lunch? We would say, how many people are coming to lunch at the team meeting next Tuesday? It's specific, the context is clear, and it's included in the question. If you do this, you'll get the kind of answer that you want, and you'll avoid complications, misunderstandings, and so on.
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