It is not simple for people seeking help to try to ask questions while having some fear of sounding like an idiot, especially inside a professional setting. Whether it is in a classroom, a teacher’s office, a workplace, or even online, we all want to make or keep good impressions in front of others. There is the saying, “Choose your words carefully”, yet there are people who may either stumble on their question or stay quiet until someone speaks up for them. There are aspects to be mindful of when asking questions correctly while adapting in a professional setting, many of which are driven with readiness and eagerness to learn.
Most of the time, meaningful questions are made with prior knowledge related to the topic. To obtain such knowledge, a person must have made a considerable amount of preparation, such as reading research material or watching informative media ahead of time. Preparation is the key to quality communication and is applicable to many scenarios in life, such as school or a workplace. By covering basic knowledge beforehand, one can create complex, yet thoughtful questions instead of simple easy questions. For example, college professors assign their students reading tasks in order to prepare them for upcoming lectures. By doing so, students can treat lectures as review sessions to help reinforce their research. Should the student happen to get stuck in something truly complicated, they can try gain clarification via questions from the professor during their next lecture.
Questions should be asked with a sense of professionalism, especially towards those who you will meet often later. Otherwise, questions fueled by arrogance and incompetence can lead to unwanted negativity between the learner and the helper. Ill-mannered questions should be avoided, as they can be met with ill-mannered answers, which can bode badly for relationships in the long run. Similarly, basic questions should be avoided, as it gives off an impression of laziness and can waste precious time for helpers. Though some are patient enough to answer them, understand that not everyone is the same. In such case, they can tell you to “look it up” or ignore you for a better question.
As we try to ask our questions, we should also take the answerer’s self-esteem into consideration by offering a sense of interest towards the topic. In Eric Steven Raymond’s “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way”, he mentions that we should never assume we are entitled to answers. Under that assumption, people would “take without giving back”; a person rudely demanding answers without showing any form of interest. This thought process can be detrimental to both the helper’s time and energy, which is why in some cases learners can be met with animosity from the helper.
Eric Raymond, author of “How to Ask Questions the Smart Way”, organized a guideline in his web article that shows how to correctly ask questions in open-source communities, such as StackOverflow or StackExchange. This guideline lists categorized sets of rules and steps on how to properly set up a question and respond to the answers given by the community members. Throughout the article, he emphasized the reminder that the responders, or “hackers”, do not take kindly to those who ask questions but are not willing to learn. This scenario often happens in questions asking for basic information or homework answers. The following two examples will show what “smart” and “not smart” questions can look like based on the guidelines.
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In this example, Eda Kurt asks the community how to perform matrix addition through the C language. The post contained a block of code representing her take on the problem, as well as a message explicitly saying she is a beginner seeking help. Besides the obvious misspelling of the word “matrices”, Kurt’s post has multiple issues that do not follow Raymond’s guidelines. First, Kurt’s post failed to be “precise and informative” as she did not provide any details behind her coding process. As a result, responders lack a basis needed to find the root of her problem. Second, even if Kurt understood the concepts, her post implied that she did not perform any research. One responder, thurizas, had to write detailed explanations on both the concept of matrix addition and the representation of matrices. Third, Kurt failed to “follow up on the solution”. Though her post looks unappealing to answer, community members responded nonetheless with working code. However, no replies from her were made, which reminds the “take without giving back” quote from Raymond’s article.
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In this example, Thomas Roberts asks a similar question on how to perform matrix addition but through the C++ language. Like Kurt’s post, he provided a block of code representing his take on the problem. However, Roberts’ post also provided a detailed explanation on his problem-solving process, which properly follows much of Raymond’s guidelines. In the beginning of his post, he presented his thought process on matrix addition, which implied to the responder that he at least has an idea on the mathematical concept. In the second half of the post, not only did he forewarn the responder that the code has bugs, pointing out where it occurred, but also mentioned he attempted to look for “other answers” to fix them. This provided the responder two things: a clear view of the problem and assurance that effort was made to research the problem beforehand. After a few responders made their posts, Roberts followed up with his replies, all presenting his understanding to their answers in a professional manner alongside thankful remarks.
It can be difficult to ask for help in a professional, yet intimidating setting. To overcome such fears, a person needs to be able to prepare themselves with enough knowledge to reinforce their questions while proving their learning interests to their audience. Raymond’s article is one of many useful resources that people can reference before making their questions. With an solid format in mind, a person can efficiently seek help without undermining their helpers.