Questions, quest
Trevor Eddolls probes into the art of the perfect question...
C
lassic SFBT, derived from the work of Steve
de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, really has only
four questions for a client, which are:
• What do you want?
• How will you know when you
have it?
• What are you doing already to
get there?
• What would be happening if
you were a little closer to what
you want?
Open questions begin with What, Why,
How, Describe, etc. In a therapeutic environment,
“Why” questions often make the client feel defensive.
“How” questions can result in very long answers.
“What” questions are usually the most e?ective.
A therapist needs to be armed with a few
more questions than that to really understand
what each individual client really wants to
get from their therapy. But before we look
at “good” questions, let’s discuss types of
question.
Questions can be categorised as ‘closed’ or
‘open’ and direct and indirect.
A closed question can be answered with
either a single word or a short phrase;
examples might be, “how old are you?” and
“where do you live?” Quite often a closed
question can be answered with either “yes”
or “no”, for example, “Do you su?er with
IBS?” Closed questions can be used to set up
a positive frame of mind in a client by asking
successive questions which obviously have
the answer yes and then moving on quickly to
ones that don’t necessarily have that answer,
but the client stays with the positive frame.
It’s also possible to turn any opinion into
a closed question that forces a yes or no
by adding tag questions, such as “Isn’t it?”,
“Don’t you?”, or “Can’t they?” to any statement – a trick
Erickson used in therapy scripts with “And you will,
won’t you?”
An open question is likely to result in a long answer.
It asks the client to think and it can be used to ?nd out
more about a client and their problem, e.g. “What’s
keeping you awake these days?”
20 Hypnotherapy Today
Examples of direct questions are, “What’s your
address?” or “What’s your doctor’s name”.
Indirect questions are polite, longer forms of normal
questions and are usually viewed as less threatening
– less like an interrogation. They are formed from
two parts: a polite expression, and a question, which
has no subject/verb inversion like a normal question.