The psychology of answering difficult questions: watch out for this cognitive bias
International School of Communication (ISOC)
ISOC is a specialist training company. We deliver short courses for professionals on all kinds of communication skills.
“When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” So goes the old saying, later defined by psychologist Abraham Maslow as a human cognitive bias. When you have a useful and familiar tool, it’s tempting to apply it to whatever you find in front of you.
I’m often reminded of this idea in media training when we coach techniques for answering difficult questions. The best strategies are simple and versatile – reframing, zoom-in, zoom-out, dig-for-gold, humanising, selective yielding, connection-building and all the rest.?
These are useful, practical tools that help you feel ready for any tricky question that comes your way. Knowing you can do it is the hammer. But not every question is a nail. Not every question needs or deserves an answer. I’ve seen spokespeople flexing their brainpower to craft sophisticated answers, and sometimes tying themselves in knots -- because their first instinct was to be cooperative, and with these tools in hand they knew they could do it.?
Just because a journalist asks a question, doesn’t mean he or she is entitled to an answer, or that you’re obliged to answer it, or even that you’re the right person to answer it. If you have a good reason not to answer, say so.
There are five important categories of question that you can legitimately decline to answer – without making the effort to get clever about how you do it.
1.?????Journalists often ask about confidential information (after all, news needs to be new, and there’s nothing newsier than a secret). They often do this knowing that you’re not supposed to reveal your sales forecasts or your pre-launch product, but knowing also that sometimes people let things slip, so it’s worth a try. You can smile and say, “We’re not making that public right now,” or: “I’d love to explain that but unfortunately I can’t because it’s commercially sensitive.”
2.?????Journalists often ask about topics beyond your scope or role. There’s often not much time to research an interviewee’s expertise and remit. If you’re a petrochemical engineer and they ask about the social responsibility strategy, you can say, “I know there’s some great stuff happening but it’s really not my department; here’s what I do know…”
3.?????Journalists often ask for very specific details. If you’re the CEO and they ask exactly how many staff are employed at one facility, it’s OK to say, “you know what, I don’t know.” No need to struggle, if you couldn’t reasonably be expected to know.
4.?????Journalists often ask you to speculate. What might be the cause, what might be the result, what might happen in the future. Sometimes you can run with this usefully, as an opportunity for strategic thought leadership. Be careful though, because predictions have a habit of coming back to bite you when they don’t come true. You can reasonably say: “It wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate on that; but here’s what I do know for sure…”
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5.?????Journalists often invite questions about third parties. In the theatre of news, it makes great drama when one company or institution comments in judgment on another. It’s rarely in your interests to be a player on that stage, and the journalist knows it, and so you can happily say: “We prefer not to talk about our competitors – we focus on what we ourselves are doing, which is…”
There you have it. When you’re holding a hammer, it’s wise to be sure that what you’re looking at is a nail. When asked a difficult question, your first instinct should be to ask yourself: “Do I need to answer this at all?”
About media training at ISOC
Our coaching model uses active learning with positive individual coaching, based on a systematic competency matrix. It has been refined through more than 5,000 media training sessions over more than 15 years. It works consistently and produces immediate results. You can take our self-paced e-learning course, join a public group course face to face or live online, or book a custom in-house programme. Find out more at https://www.isoc.com/media-training
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The next?public Media?Training course will run live online on 8 - 9 December 2022.
Use?the checkout code?MIT8DEC for?a 25% discount.