Objectives

By the end of this topic you will be able to:

• differentiate between purposeful questioning and interrogating
• understand the use and application of questions in the therapeutic process
• explain the difference between varying types of questions
• synthesise your knowledge to formulate appropriate questions for distinct purposes
• demonstrate beginning skills in counselling questioning technique.

Introduction

As we understood from Topic (5) that we need to use attending and observational skills to learn about our client, we can now develop expertise in questioning to build on the therapeutic alliance and make progress towards our client’s identified goals. We need to use questions wisely and consider the purpose of the question and ensure that the content of our questions and the manner in which they are asked contributes positively to the counselling process. Ask questions with an open mind, be aware of your own values and beliefs as you hear and respond to your clients answers and beware of using the power imbalance of the therapeutic relationship to ask frivolous, inappropriately timed and/or unnecessarily intrusive questions.

Questioning is not interrogation

In the chapter from the textbook which you have just read, the authors alert us to the need not to interrogate our clients. This is a very important factor – whilst we will use questions to gather information and make assessments, we are not counselling if the structure and progress of our session requires us to obtain answers to a pre-determined list of questions (on a clipboard or in our heads) which we must ‘get through’ in order for us to feel that the session has been successful.

The purpose of questions

Questions used at the very beginning of the session will set the tone of how the session will progress and in the previous topic you have practiced some of these types of questions. Your initial questions were framed for varying purposes which would have included:

1. To build rapport (‘chit chat’), e.g.
   

   ‘Is it still raining outside’?

2. To ascertain why the client has attended, e.g.
   

   ‘What are some of the struggles you have been having?’

3. To find out the client’s expectations, e.g.
   

   ‘What would need to occur today for you to feel that our session had been helpful?’

4. To become aware of any previous negative experiences of counselling, e.g.
   

   ‘Have you been to counselling before?’

These initial questions will also help you to ascertain whether you are the appropriate counsellor for this client, or whether other services or agencies may be more relevant to your client’s needs.

Continuing with the questioning process now allows:

• exploration of issues at a deeper level
• expansion of awareness of concerns
• finding out new information to support the client’s process (Ivey & Ivey, 2005, p. 68).

Asking specific types of questions also invites the client to:

• validate their experiences
• contextualise their issue within a social construct
• enrich their stories, recognising the importance of influential others
• find exceptions to problems
• use language to explore alternative outcomes
• experience themselves as separate to ‘the problem’
• recognise progress by their responses to scaling questions
• set and commit to goals
• build motivation, confidence and competence
• find unique solutions to long-standing issues (Milner & O’Bryne, 2002, pp. 38–55).

Questions can also be asked to force the client to make a decision within a defined range of options when the client has been confused or unable to clearly define their important issues (Blonna & Watter, 2005, cited in Pelling et al., 2007). An example of a forced-choice question is:

You have told me that you want to lose weight but you also greatly enjoy the social companionship of the beer, pizza and pasta nights you attend every Tuesday. Which of these takes priority for you at the moment?

Use of questions can assist the client to move from a painful and dysfunctional past to focus on a hopeful future. Hubble, Duncan and Miller (2002, p. 420) suggest some examples of ‘possibility focused’ questions:

• ‘What will be different when (e.g. anxiety, drinking, feuding with your spouse, etc.) is behind you?’
• ‘Where do you suppose you will be when you first notice the changes? What will have taken place just before the changes that will have helped them to happen? What will happen later that will help maintain them?’

Open and closed questions

Both open and closed questions have their place in the counselling context. They are used for different purposes and their use will result in a different type of response from the client. The opening words of questions will affect the response to them. This is known as the ‘basic question stem’.

• ‘what’ (what was your reaction?),
• ‘where’ (where did that leave you?),
• ‘when’ (when was this particularly important?) or
• ‘how’ (how important is this to you?) and
• ‘why’ (why did you think that?).

Be very careful in using a ‘why’ question. ‘Why’ almost always asks for reasons, explanations and other justifications, often leaving your client with the nagging feeling that they could have somehow done better. In fact, a ‘why’ question is often a barely concealed accusation. ‘Why’ questions can be intrusive and disempower our clients as they feel they need to please us by giving the response which they judge we want to hear. In our efforts to assist our clients to move on from past experiences towards a creative and hopeful future, use of ‘why’ questions can be quite an impediment.

(a) Closed questions

Closed questions are those that lead to a specific answer. They are usually short. The answers are often simple and definite, e.g. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. There may be times during a counselling session when you will need to ask closed questions – for example, when you require specific information, such as:

1. ‘Did you live there for a long time?’
2. ‘How many children do you have?’

At the beginning of an interview there are often more closed questions to gather specific details. These questions do not generally free up the client to talk – they limit the answers the client can give and, although the client may expand on the answer, it is unlikely that he/she will.

(b) Open questions

Open questions give the client lots of scope to be creative in his/her answer; they allow the client to explore relevant areas and, in fact, encourage the client to divulge additional material.

Consider the above questions, now rephrased as open questions:

1. ‘Tell me about how it is for you living here?’

Or for the second question:

2. ‘What about your children?’

The answer is likely to be much richer and give more information to the questioner.

Geldard, D, Geldard, K & Yin Foo, R. (2017, pp. 70–72) give some very clear examples of open and closed questions which you have already read at the beginning of this topic. You may wish to refer to this section again before undertaking the next activity.

Probing, prompting and clarifying questions

Apart from open and closed questions, questions can be probing, prompting and clarifying. According to Egan, (2002) probing and prompting statements are very useful for requesting further information or for helping the client to explore issues in more depth. For example, you may be using them by saying:

‘could you tell me more about … ?’

Probing questions are very powerful and may be seen as an indirect questioning skill. Ivey and Ivey (2007) give another prompting question stem to expand upon a story beginning with:

‘What else … (is bothering you)?’

or

‘Anything else … (you would like to tell me)?’

It is handy to have a few of these phrases up your sleeve which support the client and yourself in continuing to explore their situation.

Clarifying questions are also a great opportunity to make sure that what you understand or think the client is saying is really what is happening for them. A good way of doing this is:

‘What exactly do you mean with …?’

Summary

Questioning is a large component of the counselling process. In this topic we have learned the difference between open and closed questions and applied our knowledge with some exercises. We have understood the therapeutic purpose of questioning and how inappropriate and ill-timed questions can do more harm than good. Now that we know how to frame good therapeutic questions, we will learn how to respond to the information our clients give us in the next topic.