Doesn't Hurt to Ask Read online

  And then there are just plain stupid questions.

  There are good questions and bad questions and sometimes the same question can be either depending on the circumstances in which it is asked. Asking my eyewitness about his vision was a fantastic question to ask…in my office weeks before trial.

  There is a picture my staff at the Solicitor’s Office* gave me from this trial. It was taken by a local newspaper photographer snapped at precisely the moment this witness said “I have perfect vision in my right eye.” My staff gave me the picture from that trial because there was absolutely no discernible reaction on my face when the witness referenced his one eye. Inside I was dying. Outside the jury saw nothing—that is, until I compounded that error by asking what color the blue bag was. I survived the first bad question only to squander the moment by asking the second.

  DEFENSE MECHANISM

  No one is born knowing how to ask the right questions. Even the brightest among us is not necessarily good at asking questions. The art of doing so can flow from any number of impetuses. For me, it was the convergence of several rivers of thought. It was equal parts (1) a lack of confidence in my own abilities, (2) an acknowledgment of what human nature is at its core—that people like to talk more than they like to listen, (3) many hours spent in endless inner dialogue, and (4) an awareness that asking the right question is a devilish way to turn the tables.

  The chief motivation for using questions rather than declarative statements was and remains impetus number one—that it is a defense mechanism for me. I never thought I was smart enough to participate in conversations with smart people, but I was drawn to be around them.

  My dad was smart. He was a medical doctor. So I would ask him questions about medicine. What does the top number mean for blood pressure? Why is 95 a high resting heart rate? How do children get leukemia?

  My best friend growing up, Keith Cox, wound up going to Duke University and became an oral surgeon—he was really smart. Do I let him know I am not, or do I mask it by asking questions?

  Judge Randy Bell was one of the smartest people I met in my life. He was a judge on the South Carolina Court of Appeals. He ultimately was elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court but died before he could take office.

  I met him when he was at the Court of Appeals in my first year out of law school. He was a dialysis patient and had to travel from Columbia, South Carolina, to Augusta, Georgia, for dialysis and he needed someone to drive him. So I did. He was a legal scholar. He was an expert on Roman culture. He knew the English common law and could lead the discussion on natural law versus positivism. It is human nature to want to impress someone like Randy Bell—to talk about what I knew and to participate in conversation. I remember driving him to Augusta one afternoon early in our relationship. He was talking about the Nuremberg Trials, something I then knew nothing about. He then moved to contributory negligence versus comparative negligence, something else I knew nothing about. He moved from topic to topic—from Roman mythology to deontology—trying to find something, anything, to which I could possibly contribute.

  He failed.

  So finally he asked, “Well, son, what do you know something about? What would you like to talk about?”

  Mainly I wanted to talk about how in the heck I found myself in the car with an expert on Roman law but I said, “NASCAR, I’ve really gotten into NASCAR lately.”

  “Great,” he responded. “Tell me about the origins of NASCAR.”

  Silence.

  “I know I like Richard Petty. That’s about all I know, Your Honor.”

  That was another low point for me. Armed with an undergraduate degree in history and a law degree but devoid of any real knowledge of either, I was in a car with a soon to be justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, and he was desperately trying, without any success, to find any topic in the universe I knew enough about to fill a car ride from Columbia, South Carolina, to Augusta, Georgia, and back. I had the same recurring sinking feeling of inadequacy: I just don’t feel very smart. How do I mask it? How do I cover it up? How do I participate in conversations or in professional interactions without revealing these massive gaps in knowledge?

  You can either get smart quickly or find a way to fully conceal your perceived lack of knowledge. You can fill the gaps or you can fill the time. Or maybe, just maybe, you can find a way to fill both simultaneously—by asking questions.

  No, I don’t know anything about Roman mythology, but I remember a little about Greek mythology. Are the gods different or do the same gods just have different names? Who is your favorite god? Which godlike power would you want if you could pick, Judge Bell? You seem more of a fan of Rome than Athens; how did that come about? What can you tell me about Spartan culture? Was my hometown of Spartanburg named for Sparta?

  English common law? Don’t know much about that. But I do know enough to ask why some common law is codified or passed by legislative bodies and some not? If there is a conflict between common law and statutory law, which prevails? Is there any federal common law, Judge Bell?

  You can learn and pass the time by taking advantage of one of the greatest human needs we have: the desire to be heard. Most people are wired to want to talk, so I take advantage of that. People want to talk more than they want to listen, and if I can leverage human nature I can mask my own deficiencies. So I suppress or subrogate my own desire to be heard and replace it with my desire to avoid being perceived as uneducated—isn’t that a win for both of us? You get to talk, I get to listen and learn, and I avoid that sinking feeling of not measuring up. Trust me, asking questions is always your safest bet.

  STUPID QUESTIONS ARE BETTER THAN STUPID ANSWERS

  When it comes to the art of persuasion, we have typically been led to think of the following format: opening statement, make a point, state an argument. Then there’s a long stream of declarations, statements, affirmations, presentations, proclamations, pronunciations to slowly build an argument with as few holes as possible and as many powerful assertions as one can fit in a breath. That’s the traditional model. But what if there is a better way?

  Rarely do we think of persuasion as asking a series of questions. Questions are considered reactive more than proactive, right? Questions are sometimes seen as evidence you don’t know the answer to something. Questions can make you seem weak, ill-informed, unknowing, and uncertain in your beliefs. That may be what others would have us believe, but it is diametrically opposed to my own experience. Questions can gather the time, the information, and the interpersonal connectivity to persuade in ways that simply proclaiming what you believe cannot accomplish.

  We’ve already witnessed that the old adage “There is no such thing as a stupid question” was easily and swiftly proven wrong in my case, but there is some truth worth acknowledging there. There are ill-thought-out, poorly phrased, and unwise questions, to be sure, but even the most stupid question is a thousand times better than a stupid declarative statement.

  You own every declarative comment that comes out of your mouth, but with questions you have an out. Because of that, questions are perhaps first and foremost the safest route in the art of persuasion.

  No matter what you ask, you can say “I didn’t know—that’s why I asked” if you were dead wrong. You can say “I thought so,” if in fact you are right. You are guilty of nothing except seeking more information. It’s the difference between sounding stupid and being stupid.

  Sounding stupid might be: Who’s the author of Crime and Punishment?

  Being stupid is: Leo Tolstoy is the author of Crime and Punishment.

  The first shows a lack of information, sure, but the second shows that you think you know something that in reality you don’t. It discredits everything that comes out of your mouth from that moment on. The first can be an honest lapse in memory. The second is a dishonest lapse in intelligence.

/>   Who would you trust down the line, the guy who is honest and asks fair questions or the guy who says things that are obviously not true? The guy who’s inquisitive or the guy who lies with conviction? We’ve all seen the guy in a business meeting who has made a false statement in hopes of bolstering a point or making the sale, only to be caught in his lie instantaneously or down the road. The minute you make a false declarative, you lose credibility with the person with whom you are talking or whoever might be listening.

  And while we will most certainly dive into this more, there are less stupid questions to ask that accomplish all the best reasons for pursuing the art of questioning. If you find yourself in a conversation discussing, say, Crime and Punishment (my favorite book), and have no knowledge or interest in the subject but want to hold your own in a long and painful car ride with me, the better questions to ask might be:

  What do you think Crime and Punishment is really about?

  Why do you think it was written?

  Crime and Punishment? Oh, that’s interesting. How does it align with your personal experience in the justice system, Mr. Gowdy?

  What about Crime and Punishment do you like?

  A bad question is almost always better than a false declarative assertion. I was listening to a recording of an Easter sermon and the preacher placed Luke in the room for the Last Supper. Luke? Really? He wasn’t around during that time and if he was, he definitely wasn’t one of the Twelve Disciples. It would have been far better had the preacher posed it as a question. “Was Luke there?” “Can you help me name the Disciples?” “How would you feel being in the room where the Last Supper took place?” You have an out with questions—all you were seeking was more information. You lose your jury when you make affirmative, declarative statements if those statements are either wrong or unproven. You are welcome to preface those statements with “in my opinion,” but the presence of Luke at the Last Supper is not really open for opinion, is it?

  When you’re a preacher, your job to persuade is, quite literally, to convert. That’s a tough gig and it’s a big burden of proof to carry. A declarative statement like that could cause the listener to discredit your whole persuasive attempt and immediately stop listening to whatever it is that follows, no matter how innocent the mistake or how compelling the remainder of your point.

  Does it really matter if a preacher makes an honest mistake and places one of the authors of the four Gospels in a room where many may have assumed he was anyway? Probably not. Perhaps my reaction to placing Luke at the Last Supper was a projection of my own spiritual battle onto someone who is supposed to know more than I do. But while some mistakes in life are free, some cost you your life, and many are somewhere in the middle, there are those mistakes that force you to confront your own mental demons and lead you into deeper introspection. What does this innocuous but obvious mistake mean to a listener on the edge? What other factual discrepancies may occur when spreading what is supposed to be biblical truth? That’s when the questions move inward.

  SELF-DIRECTED AND SELF-PERSUADED

  Remember my smart medical doctor father? Well, he loves South Carolina Gamecock football more than anything in life. I am pretty sure he loves South Carolina Gamecock football more than he loves my three sisters and me (although in his defense he does deny that). He would pile us into a wood-paneled station wagon six hours before kickoff so we could tailgate leisurely and be in the stands to watch…the band warm up. Yes, you read that correctly. Not to watch the players warm up. To watch the band warm up before the players even took the field. It was an all-day Saturday affair and we were never late. Except once.

  We pulled out of the driveway of our home on the east side of Spartanburg and took a right rather than a left to head toward the interstate and Columbia for the game. We took another right and wound up on the road where Lana and Randy Mahaffey lived with their two sons, Clay and David. Clay and David were just a little bit younger than I was, and I knew them very well. Lana and Randy were my parents’ closest friends. Both Lana and Randy were schoolteachers. The Mahaffeys went to the same church we attended. Randy was and remains a phenomenal golfer—even into his eighties. Countless nights he would watch me swing a club under a streetlight trying to help me master the game. The “professor,” we call him. He taught high school physics and made it fun, which is really hard to do. Lana taught high school English and part of my love for reading came from the short stories I read in her class. Our backyards touched each another—backyards big enough for a full-field football game. Even though Clay and David were a little younger, we still played together, and when I hit my early teens I even babysat for them.

  Why in the world was Dad stopping by their house on game day? Why was Mom sitting in the front seat with a blank stare on her face? Why wouldn’t Mom answer when we asked how much longer Dad would be inside? Why were tears streaming down Mom’s face?

  Dad was inside telling his best friend and my mom’s best friend that their younger son, David, had leukemia.

  The who, what, when, where, and how questions that make up so much of life become so small and inconsequential in the face of the toughest question of all: Why?

  David Mahaffey fought but ultimately died, and with him died that childhood innocence each of us enjoys for at least a season of life. For me, that innocence would be replaced with a life’s worth of questions.

  We moved to another house in Spartanburg about a mile away. This new house had three stories, a clothes chute where we could drop clothes from the top floor and they would magically appear in the basement, and the most important feature of all for me—a small coat closet where no one would think to look for me. That’s where the inner dialogue began:

  Where did we come from? Was there a reservoir of souls God picked from? How did I get picked for this family? Are the souls recycled? Could David come back as someone else’s son? Where was he now? Why didn’t I have a brother? Why did God take David when Lana and Randy only had two children? Why not take me or one of my sisters? My parents would still have three children if He did that?

  No, I did not necessarily like cutting the grass for hours, but I could talk to myself and that I did like. No, I did not like riding in the third seat of the station wagon by myself, but I could talk to myself, and that I did like. No, I did not like getting up at 4:00 A.M. to deliver newspapers on a motorized bicycle, but there was no one else up, and I could talk to myself, and that I did like.

  That dialogue continues to this day. I am constantly asking myself questions and rehearsing the questions I would like to ask others. Every closing argument ever given in a courtroom was given pushing a lawnmower weeks before. Every speech ever given in Congress was first given driving alone to and from the airport in my truck. I play it out in my head before it ever happens in real life. How do I ask that? What if she says this? Where do you pivot to if that is the answer? How can you process a “yes” or “no” with equal speed and acuity?

  So, yes, asking questions was the natural and probable convergence of several factors: (1) It was a lack of confidence in my own abilities, (2) it was first the realization and subsequently an acknowledgment of what human nature is at its core (everyone is begging to be heard, so I’ve got the leg up if I just decide to shut up and listen), (3) it was hours spent in an endless inner dialogue trying to understand what I believed, why I believed it, and whether those beliefs could withstand the cauldron of public display, and, lastly, (4) over the course of time, it became a devilish way to either turn the tables during a conversation or lower the tensions and avoid the impending conflict. Asking questions just seemed the best way to communicate and persuade while lowering the risk of exposing any personal weaknesses.

  But most of all, questions have been the way I persuaded others for as long as I can remember because questions have been the way I persuaded myself for as long as
I can remember.

  3 X 0 = 3

  I told you Lana and Randy Mahaffey had two sons: Clay and David. Clay continues to be a friend to this day. We don’t play golf as much as we used to. He’s long since married (to a wonderful woman named Stacey). He went to Clemson University (no one is perfect) and became an engineer. There is a certain symmetry that begins to emerge in life if you look closely for it. Clay’s father helped instill a lifelong love of golf in me. I was present when Clay had his first hole in one. It’s why I call him “Ace” instead of Clay, and no one else does.

  Clay and Stacey have children of their own. They named their first son David. David Mahaffey the second. This David Mahaffey is a strong, smart college kid. He’s also a golfer and worked at the golf course where our two families have played countless rounds together for well over half a century.

  David Mahaffey scored higher on the math section of the SAT than I did in all sections combined. Don’t laugh. He probably scored higher than you did too. So, of course, I am going to engage him in a conversation about math, right? I like challenges. I like taking on Goliath.

  Asking myself math questions is easy: I don’t know whether my answers are right or not. How hard can that conversation be? But asking questions of someone good at math, that’s a challenge. Persuading someone who is more knowledgeable than I am, now that is what the art of persuasion is all about.

  “What is 3 x 0?” I asked the young David Mahaffey.

  He looked at me like I had lost my mind. “It’s zero, Mr. Gowdy. Everyone knows that.”