Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Jossey Bass/Pfeiffer from the forthcoming book, The Trainer's Portable Mentor of Training & Development.

Asking the right questions is much more important than having the right answers!

How can you ask questions that help you to assess training needs when you don't know what you don't know; when you can not be sure what the problem is? The answer is to use diagnostic questions. These questions are different from interrogation or cross-examination questions, which are designed to judge or assign blame. Diagnostic questions do not assume the nature of the problem is known, and they allow the people answering the questions to guide the inquiry in the early stages.

This sounds simple, and for some it is. For most of us though, it is difficult to ask questions that are not tainted with our own preconceptions about what the problem is and, also, what sort of solutions would be appropriate. Further, our perceptions of the problem are likely to be inaccurate due to the biases that affect how we attribute a cause of success or failure. Such "attributional biases" affect all of us, as explained below. In sum, the combination of jumping to a too-hasty diagnosis of the problem, along with the attributional biases always at work when we perceive causes of failure, can make performing an accurate needs assessments a tricky business.

The difficulty of composing diagnostic questions is demonstrated with the following brief case example. Students engaged in role-playing this case example were instructed to generate diagnostic questions. Below you will see some of their results.

Case example, Part A

"The Forklifts" case example is based on a true incident: A company was experiencing problems because forklifts were breaking down much more often than expected. Executives had evidence that the forklift operators were not performing routine maintenance on the machines, maintenance that would have prevented many breakdowns. It was assumed the operators needed further training in maintenance procedures. The company called in some consultants.

The forklift case example was given to a group of junior and senior undergraduate students in my management development and training class. In teams, the students prepared questions to ask of other students who took the role of forklift operators. Those acting as operators were told the "whole" story (you will see this in Part B below), advised that they did not want to appear to be at fault in this, and told to otherwise play the role as they chose.

Following are some of the questions students asked in performing their diagnosis. After each question I have noted the unwarranted assumption embedded in the question. The questions are arranged in two groups. The first five questions are judging/blaming questions, ordered worst to least bad. Following those are six examples of better diagnostic questions, relatively free of judging and blaming.

Please note that during the in-class exercise, students were only able to come up with one exploratory diagnostic question (the last one listed, regarding improving working conditions). Fun exercises to improve ability to ask assumption-free questions are the old puzzlers like this one: "Dick and Jane lay dead on the floor. The curtain was flapping in the breeze. The door to the room was locked. How did Dick and Jane die?" Then allow questions to which the only answers can be either yes or no. (The answer to the riddle is at the end of this article.)

Judging and blaming questions

  • Why do you think proper maintenance is not being done on forklifts? (Assumes improper maintenance is the problem)
  • What can you tell me about the forklifts breaking down? (Assumes breakdowns are the problem)
  • Why do you think the forklifts are breaking down? (Assumes these are breakdowns [not sabotage] AND that this person knows something about the breakdowns and sees the breakdowns as a problem)
  • Do you think we have a problem with the forklifts? (Assumes the forklifts are the problem)
  • Tell me about the problems you have at work. (Assumes there is awareness of a problem)

Now let's look at some questions that will allow the necessary information to emerge.

Exploratory judgment-free and blame-free questions

  • Tell me about your work.
  • Tell me a story about your best day at work.
  • Tell me about a worst day at work.
  • What questions should I be asking about your work?
  • What should I understand about your work?
  • What are some suggestions you can make that might improve your working conditions?

Note: Since exploratory questions are so very open, they usually should be followed by questions like, Could you tell me more about that? Could you give me an example?

Case example, Part B

The consultants called in did not assume that the nature of the problem was known. Instead, they conducted a full-scale diagnosis of the problem. They engaged in face-to-face personal interviews with a horizontal as well as vertical cross-section of employees. They fed back their data in a "mirroring" phase. For example, if researchers found that one of the themes to emerge from the interviews was the lack of communication and participation in decision making, they would identify this theme and then cite several verbatim statements made by (unidentified, anonymous) employees. The "mirroring" session would provide these detailed, verbatim statements, such as the following: "I don't know why the bosses want us to unload those Wednesday trucks way back in the worst area of the parking lot. I think there are lots better places and times that would make my unloading job easier. But no one asked me about it, so I just do what I am told."

The consultants discovered that the combination of driving the forklifts on uneven ground outside the warehouse and uncomfortable seats without springs was causing physical distress to the operators. The operators began to hate the machines, and due to that hatred, they chose not to perform the prescribed maintenance. They knew how, they knew why, but they would not do it. This is a case in which a cursory diagnosis might have led to futile training. Instead, the consultants uncovered the true problem, which did not require a training intervention.

Five principles for conducting training needs assessments

Principle 1: Do not assume the given or apparent problem is the problem.

Move around the problem to ask questions from those above, below, in front, behind, and in the middle of the problem. Avoid questions that are problem-focused or solution-focused, because this often limits your inquiry into the nature of the problem.

Principle 2: Ask exploratory questions.

Do ask people to describe, to explain, to tell you about their work. Do use critical-incident-type questions through which they are asked to describe an especially good time at work, or an especially bad situation. Feed back your data to the people you interviewed to jointly interpret the findings.

Principle 3: Examine the reward systems surrounding the problem.

Consider both the formal and informal reward systems in the organization. Here, the classic article "On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B" is perennially relevant. Are there any rewards for desired performance? Or are people either not rewarded, or perhaps even penalized, for performing as desired?

A former student told me the story of the military in his country being concerned about the high cost of weapon repairs. The country was not at war at the time, so they decided to penalize officers whose troops had high repair costs. The officers quickly discovered that the more the weapons were handled and used by the troops, the higher the repair costs. Their solution? Lock away all weapons, to be taken out only when ordered. The troops rarely handled their weapons, and repair expenses dropped, but how well-prepared were these soldiers? It was a classic case of rewarding efficiency at the expense of effectiveness.

Bringing this back to our forklift case example, what happens when a forklift breaks down? Does this mean the operator has a break from work while a repair or replacement is completed? What behavior is rewarded?

Principle 4: Be aware of attributional biases.

Attribution theory tells us that we all have a tendency to protect our own egos when we fail at something, by attributing our failures to factors external to ourselves. Thus we fail to achieve our sales quota due to a slump in the economy, problems with the product, bad luck, etc. However, when we observe another person's failure, we tend to attribute it to factors internal to that person. So when our coworker fails to achieve his or her sales quota, we tend to believe it is due to lack of ability or effort. This is why the workplace is full of so many stupid and lazy people. Of course, we ourselves are not like "them."

When I am observing others, I will tend to attribute failures to the lack of motivation or skill level of the people I am interviewing about the problem. Conversely, the people experiencing the problem will be affected by the self-serving bias that leads them to blame external factors for their problems, not seeing their own deficiencies in ability or effort. How can we avoid or correct for these attributional biases?

First, avoid the appearance of blaming. Often there is a tendency to point fingers and to focus on identifying the person or persons "causing" the problem. We assume that, if there is a problem, there must be someone causing it.

One helpful strategy to circumvent this cycle of blaming and denials is to conceptualize the problem as distinct from any person. Make this problem an actual character in your story. In the forklift case, we might have "The Breakdown Demon."

Principle 5: Allow for the unexpected.

Do ask people to suggest to you what else you should be asking about. Let the interviewees guide your inquiry in the early stages. Be open to people mentioning something totally unanticipated, and following up on it. Pay attention to non-verbals and supposedly irrelevant side comments, and use open follow-up questions to explore these leads.

Conclusion

The first step in training needs assessment is awareness of attributional biases that lead us to blame another's lack of ability or effort for failures. Armed with such awareness, we can better design relatively assumption-free questions. Asking true diagnostic questions that are exploratory rather than judgmental or blaming creates an adventure of discovery, and is the basis for an effective needs assessment.

So how did Dick and Jane die? The wind killed them. They were smothered to death in the air when the breeze blew their bowl off the windowsill. Dick and Jane were goldfish.