Teaching yourself to ask questions

Asking questions during conferences and seminars is daunting for many students and PhD candidates. I know it was (and still is, but much less) for me! I’ve tried to develop these skills from the start of my PhD and I’m still learning. However, the other day someone asked me at a conference how I “always” ask questions in conferences. As it is not something I have “always” done, I thought I’d write about my own approach to make progress on this to maybe help others trying to do the same. Learning this is very doable, you can really notice your progress on the way and in my experience, it is also surprisingly fun, exciting, and you learn a lot from it (and it can be a real adrenaline rush).

How it started: fear of making a bad impression

I think my initial fear came from focusing on the negatives: being completely overwhelmed by the talk, being sure I misunderstood stuff, or perhaps being insecure about misunderstanding the talk or missing essential background and saying something stupid as a result. My initial fear was thus really centered around a lack of confidence, and this is really something you can practice building. I think building this also requires confidence from other parts of the PhD experience such as working in a supportive environment (with a supportive supervisor).

Part 1: Coming up with questions by taking question-centered notes

For me, the way I decided to get started (when I started my PhD) was by just writing questions down for myself as an exercise without the direct goal to ask them to take the pressure of myself. A major way to focus for me has always been to write stuff down on paper, as my mind tends to wander without it. Therefore, my go-to strategy in talks is to take notes in an associative way. By “associative” here I mean thinking about a talk in terms of the questions: this helps me a lot in structuring my understanding but also it means you can often look ahead at what is coming.

To get out of just writing what the speaker is saying I try to see it as a private brainstorm session as much as a note-taking exercise to remember what is being said. During the brainstorm it is possible to think about different levels of abstraction just an exercise to get started. For me this is really a way to stimulate myself to think about the presented work without any judgement (from myself or others). Practicing this with online talks is even better as you can scroll back and forth if you think you miss something! (A conference talk does take much longer this way).

Afterwards, discussing with peers or colleagues can help shape your thoughts on a particular talk and what your remaining questions are, and gives more confidence regarding the questions you thought of. Notes in that case serve the dual purpose of being able to remember what it was about.

The third purpose of question-centered notes is that writing down questions as I think of them helps me to phrase them. This is especially important for the next stage: as it can be scary when you get to asking them! Having them written on paper helps me to speak the words it in the heat of the moment as you can just read it out. Perhaps this is more important to me than it would be to a native speaker, but many people in science are non-native speakers so I think it’s worth mentioning.

Questions to get started

• Keeping it close: How does it apply to your own work?

• Technical: How does the chosen method impact the possible outcomes that you are able to measure? What would be essential controls? Does it work if you make it bigger (i.e. in a body or organ instead of in cells)?

• Looking forward: what does it remind you of? what is the impact or possible other application? How does it work? What questions remain unanswered or would be your next step?

Part 2: Setting Achievable goals

In meetings, starting from small to bigger has really helped me to set achievable goals. This probably starts by addressing speakers directly after their talk (so it’s not in the whole audience). For me personally I applied this from small to bigger meetings: from our own group’s work discussion in the very beginning of my PhD, to the departmental seminars, to the talks from speakers at our department that are still a relatively small audience, small conferences, keynote lectures and finally big conferences where you have to wait at the microphone. A plenary session question at a big conference is still on my to do list! 😉 Not sure I’m ready for it yet but I do think I will get there eventually. My current goal is to try to think of and ask at least 1 question at each conference I attend, and this is currently mostly very achievable. Of course, the goal to actually ask the question is not sacred here; if I genuinely cannot come up with a question that is also fine, as long as a tried. Setting this goal is really a way for myself to think about questions that I think are interesting and feel comfortable to ask.

Before embarking on this question-asking-exercise, I would feel already a bit scared at baseline, and then much worse if I thought of a question and then someone else asked that very same question! However, I think trying to improve my question-asking skills I have started to view this as something that is confidence-building rather than an opportunity to judge myself. It OK if you wrote it down and someone else asked it – clearly it was also important to them.

"A slightly ignorant question is neutral in the worst-case scenario"

Looking back on my initial fears

I think I was worried that my questions would be uninformed or ignorant and I would be heavily judged for this. Looking back I think I never judge people for questions asked to me as a speaker coming from a place of genuine interest and curiosity (which is almost always the case). At least I would very much hope I don’t and I try not to! This is awful behaviour!

Having become much more comfortable asking questions, I now have felt on occasions that the question I asked did in fact come from insufficient background knowledge. This was of course my worst fear before, but in my experience this is actually… completely fine. Are you, as a speaker, ever upset for someone asking you a polite and interested question you know the answer to immediately?! No? I thought not! What happens in real life is the speaker quickly answers your question and someone else gets to ask something. So, in hindsight I feel like a slightly ignorant question is neutral in the worst-case scenario. It can also actually still help them as they will know they can explain something better next time. If you’re interested in their topic and following along, you’re being a great audience and it’s generally appreciated. It’s weird looking back now how this is diametrically opposed to what I initially expected it would be like. For me it has been important to see asking questions as a training exercise for myself and like with everything else in life there is absolutely no need or expectation that everything you say needs to be perfect in any way.

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