Clean questions ask about location, attributes, sequence, and metaphor.
technique — attributed to Caitlin Walker
Walker's clean-question framework reduces to five categories. Location: where is it? Attributes: what kind of? Sequence forward: what happens next? Sequence back: what happens before? Metaphor: that is like what? The questions are strictly non-judgmental, which liberates the respondent's energy and produces deep personal revelations. The discipline matters because conventional questions impose the questioner's frame. Why did you do that contains an implicit judgment. What kind of decision was that contains less. Walker's discipline keeps the question structurally open so the respondent's actual experience can surface rather than being shaped to fit the questioner's assumptions.
For facilitators, executive coaches, interviewers, and researchers thinking about how to ask questions that produce honest responses. The technique is most useful as a self-discipline when interviews have been producing predictable answers.
five-categories, clean-question-types, facilitation, non-judgmental