How To Make Better Decisions by Asking an Open Question

Our most natural – and laziest – way to think about decisions is to see them as “either/or” questions:

“Should I do this, or that?”

In other words, we act as if we were in a game show, with only two doors to choose from. In fact, we often only recognize a decision once we see a specific new option, either as an opportunity, or as a solution to a problem. We then simply compare this new option to doing nothing.

That’s a very limiting perspective. If you want to think about your decision more creatively and find the best solution possible, you’ll want to open up your question.

How can we make better decisions by asking a more open question?

Try starting your question with:

• “What would be the best thing I could do … (in order to achieve x, to avoid y, and to maximize z)?”
• “How could I … (achieve x, y, and z)?”

This allows you to list and evaluate more possible courses of action, and will encourage you to look for more creative solutions. It also encourages you to think about what you actually want to achieve with your decision – again, surprisingly, not something we tend to do naturally.

The doors aren’t real! Knock ’em down and open up your view.

Here’s an example of what this can look like in a career decision:

Initial question:
“Should I invest into this new training opportunity to get XY credentials?”

An open question instead could be:
“How can I improve my chances of getting promoted in this company?”

Or even more open:
“What steps can I take to increase my chances of a more fulfilling and better compensated career?”

A real example of a very different kind of decision comes from one of my students. This is what she shared with me:

Initial question:
“Should I terminate (or limit) my interaction with my mother?”
I should explain: when I was fourteen, my mother developed an opiate habit, making me the primary caretaker of her life (and my siblings) and kicked me out right after I turned sixteen. She then got clean, and we have since resumed a relationship; however, my role returned to that of caretaker, and her role has gone back to that of a dependent, while introducing a new level of acrimony. Though the question may sound harsh, questioning whether I need to terminate (or limit) my interaction with my mother for mental health reasons has been present with me for several years. However, it has been flawed. Rather than assuming I needed to either entirely eliminate my mother from my life, or accept our relationship as it is, I could reformat the question to allow for a broader range of solutions.

New open question:
“How can I reduce taking the role of the parent when dealing with my mother?”
The restructuring allowed me to realize which part of the relationship bothered me the most and what I wanted the question to help answer. It wasn’t simply about ‘fixing the relationship’: the main issue was the parent role on my shoulders that I wanted to eliminate.

This student’s example and her reflections show beautifully how helpful this simple thinking practice can be, even for very personal and emotional decisions.

Give it a try for your own next decision and let me know how it works out!

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR