In this short instructional video, the speaker explains why asking specific questions leads to specific, useful answers. He contrasts broad, generic questions—like “What’s the status?”—which can result in vague or irrelevant responses, with precise queries that target the exact information needed, such as “How much of the project budget have we already spent?” The speaker outlines a three‑step approach: (1) identify the goal behind the question, (2) determine the exact piece of information required, and (3) phrase the question to directly request that detail. By following this method, askers can avoid ambiguous answers and obtain the data they truly need.
Chapters
How to ask questions, tip number 7. Be specific. When asking a question, the more specific you are, the more specific the answer will be. If you ask a generic question, you're likely to get a generic or ambiguous answer. And when this happens, you won't necessarily get the information that you want. If you're asking a question, you're looking for something specific. You're looking for a particular answer to give you what you need. If you're asking something in a very broad way, how is the person responding going to know give you what you want. For example, if I asked you, what's the status on your piece of work? That's a fairly broad and open question. Do I want to know where we are against the end goal? Do I want to know about a specific task or goal that you had for this week? Do I want to know about the budget that we've spent or the amount of resources that we've got left? My question was very broad. What's the status? So your answer can be delivered in whatever you think is important. Which is great because it's useful information for you, but it might not get to the heart of what I want. So when I'm asking a question, I need to be specific. How do I do this? I need to know the goal that I'm trying to achieve. What is the thing that I want from asking my question? If I care about the budget and the status of what's been spent already on a project, I should ask that. I shouldn't just say, hey, what's the status? Or where are we with the budget? I should be very specific and say, how much of the budget have we already spent? Or how much of the project budget is left? spend? That is specific, and it gets me the information that I want. So when you're asking questions, be specific.
