Asking to find out something you don't already know, not to prove a point.
A good question is a genuine request for information you don't yet have. That sounds obvious until you notice how much workplace "questioning" is actually something else — a statement in disguise, a test, a way to buy time, or a setup for the point you were going to make anyway. Asking good questions means using the question format for what it's actually for: opening a gap in your own understanding and inviting someone to fill it. It's one of the fastest ways to get better information than the person you're asking was planning to volunteer.
Phrases every question so there's exactly one acceptable answer. "Don't you think we should just ship it as-is?" "Isn't it obvious the real problem is staffing?" Technically a question mark at the end. Functionally a statement wearing a disguise, designed to make disagreement feel like disagreeing with a fact rather than an opinion — and mildly wounded when someone disagrees anyway, as though they'd broken an unspoken agreement to go along with it.
Asks question after question in quick succession, rarely pausing long enough for a full answer before the next one arrives. Treats the volume of questions as a proxy for thoroughness, when it mostly guarantees that none of them get answered past the first sentence, leaving a trail of half-finished thoughts nobody circles back to collect, and a room full of people who have started answering only the last question they can still remember being asked.
Learned that asking "why" repeatedly gets to root cause, and now applies it mechanically, five whys deep, regardless of whether the fifth "why" is producing insight or just repetition. Never notices when the technique has stopped working for this particular conversation and started making the other person feel interrogated rather than understood, still cheerfully asking "but why" number six, blissfully unaware that the answer stopped changing three whys ago.
Asks a question with zero interest in the answer, purely as a launchpad for the point they were already planning to make. "So, what do you think happens when we skip testing?" isn't a question — it's the opening line of a lecture wearing a question mark as a costume, and everyone in the room can tell, having sat through this exact bit before.
A teammate's explanation for a delay doesn't quite add up, and you suspect there's a real constraint they haven't mentioned. What would you do — ask a leading question that implies you already know the real reason, or ask an open one that genuinely invites them to explain what's actually going on?
You're in a retro and want to understand why a decision was made the way it was, without putting the person who made it on the defensive. What would you ask — "why would you ever do it that way," or "what were you weighing when you made that call?"
A stakeholder gives a vague answer to your question about priorities. What would you do — accept the vague answer and move on, or ask one specific follow-up that narrows it to something you can actually act on?