Chapter 1 - Changing the Way You Think
The practice of questioning is an act of discovery, and one which the author asserts will change the way you think: the way we perceive the world, in a very fundamental sense, is shaped by what we know, and when we change what we know, we change our perception.
Focus on Discovery
There's a rather oblique story about a time in which the author needed driving directions, and was speaking with someone who used public transportation and never drove a car. By asking her questions about the things she saw along her route, he was able to piece together enough information that he was able to get to his destination. He doesn't do much to untangle the parable, and it's not clear what point he's trying to make.
He tells a second anecdote, about a detective who was attempting to determine the motive of a spree killer. Some of the most useful clues the detective gathered were from people who had not even seen the shooting, but were in the area around the time it occurred.
(EN: Maybe the point he's trying to make is that you don't know what information will be useful? Or perhaps, if you do not assume you know what is important, you will be able to approach a situation with an open mind and ask questions, leading you to discover something you didn't suspect in the first place?)
Socratic Discovery
He mentions Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who was often portrayed as a rather obnoxious individual who was constantly asking people annoying questions.
Specifically, he presents an excerpt from "Meno," a dialogue in which Socrates interrogates someone who claims to have no knowledge of geometry, and by so doing gets the other person to provide information that demonstrates that they do, in fact, have a great deal of knowledge on the subject.
(EN: This dialogue is a bit problematic, as are most of those which Plato wrote, as they are often contrivances rather than historical records of conversation. The sense that people have inborn knowledge of geometry and science that can be teased out with questions - but the point is well taken that people do not often realize the things that they have stored in their memories until someone gets them to talking on related matters.)
Quizzing the Reluctant
In addition to getting people to realize what they think they don't know, questioning can get them to reconsider what they assume that they do know. However, the narrative that follows doesn't illustrate that at all.
Instead, it illustrates the way in which a series of questions can be used to sneak up on a topic that a person may not be comfortable discussing. By asking a sequence of benign questions in a general topic area, an interrogator can get someone to mention the very topic the interrogator is curious about - by which time a comfortable rapport has been established and the subject is the one who "brought up" the topic the interrogator wants to ask about.
Introductory Exercises
The author suggests some basic exercises that can be used to develop better questioning practices.
The first is a "be a kid again" approach - for any sentence that anyone says, there is at least one question you can ask. Consider the basic interrogatives: who, what, when, where, why, and how and the way in which they can be attached to an action or object in a statement.
The second is an approach that modeled on the quiz show "Jeopardy", in which contestants must phrase their answers in the form of a question.
The third exercise involves asking questions that elicit additional information - asking "what else?" kinds of questions to draw out information on unrelated topics.
(EN: All of this seems entirely frivolous, and are likely not very useful in actual conversations, but I can see their potential value as a mental exercise to practice formulating interrogatives.)