Open Ended Questions - A Good Teaching Tool

When you are teaching people, whether it be children in school or employees at your company, open ended questions can be very valuable. A question that is open ended is one where the answer needs to be an explanation�it cannot be just "yes" or "no". For example, if you ask someone "did you watch any good shows on television last night?" the person can give you a yes or no answer and leave it at that, even if you really wanted to know more. If you pose it in the form of an open-ended question, you can get the information that you were really looking for: "what good shows did you watch on television last night?"


Let's say that you are conducting training for employees at your company. You want to use as many open ended questions as possible in order to encourage discussion. You can do this by instructing on a certain segment of the training and then posing hypothetical questions that are open ended. If you have just explained a particularly good sales method, you can ask open ended questions afterward to see just how well people have learned what you were trying to teach. Ask people in turn how they would deal with a certain situation, and listen closely to their answers. If you think someone's answer didn't really fit along the lines of what you were trying to teach, you could ask others to give their opinions on that person's answer. This can open up a discussion that you can guide along using the principles that you are trying to teach.


You can clearly see how asking open ended questions can go a lot farther in teaching then simply asking someone if they understood what you were saying or what you were showing them. Many people, if confronted with a yes or no question about what they have learned, are afraid to say that they didn't understand something. If asked an open ended question, however, they are forced to explain what they have learned, and will be more likely to ask more questions for clarification.


Open ended questions are not meant to make people feel cornered. They are there to help people come to an understanding of what they are trying to learn in an effective manner. For this reason, when asking a question that is open ended, it is best to not use words like "exactly" or "always" or "never". These words can be intimidating. Instead of asking "Bob, please tell me exactly how you would deal with this customer's objection." you might want to put it like "Bob, please tell us one way in which you would deal with this customer's objection." This method of asking open ended questions takes some of the pressure off of the students, and keeps the lines of communication open.

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