So what first attracted you to the Millionaire Paul Daniels?
And how to be curious about what other people know.
So what first attracted you to the Millionaire Paul Daniels?
Caroline Aherne (as Mrs Merton) interviewnig Debbie McGee
This loaded question got viewers howling. As my son says “sick burn”.
And the question is not “Clean”. Like a lot of comedy it’s deliberately loaded to get a laugh. Debby McGee couldn't respond without accepting or challenging the idea she was attracted to money. There is the expected answer in the question.
Clean Language helps with communication problems by accurately being able to get a model of what’s in someones head. And unlike Mrs Merton it does this by keeping the questions free* from inference and other loaded stuff.
Interviewing Debbie McGee can be done in a few ways.
Clean Language would do it by asking questions that contained minimal “stuff” from the questioner.
Mrs Merton does it by adding some barbs in the first question, and having a go at triggering Debby into fight, flight or freeze. Which makes for classic TV. A clean interview might not make prime time comedy viewing.
Behold! My Solution to Everything!
I hate it when someone tells me something new like it’s the solution to everything. Or when someone finds a context where something doesn’t work and act like it makes it useless. So I’ll mention what Clean Language is, examples I’ve used it, what’s wrong with it, and when not to use it.
And let’s not bury the lede here. I do useful things with Clean Language. You can hire me to help or show you how.
Back to the article.
So what the flip is Clean Language?
David Grove invented Clean Language to try to remove stuff from questions he asked as a therapist. David noticed that ideas, values, worldviews and opinions could show up in even the best therapy questions. So he created a way of asking questions to limit the amount of his own stuff.
For the 12 or so Clean Questions there is a truck load of surrounding theory that’s been created by studying and extending David’s work. Because asking questions without including your own stuff can be hard.
I’m not going to cover the original clean questions right now, but talk about something called being contextually clean. This is used in Clean Interviewing.
Examples of adding evaluations to simple statements are shown above. Just adding small, little, left field or big is enough. Just adding just also works!
“Contextually Clean” questions are not the same as the 12 Squeaky Clean questions. Like the 12 clean questions they don’t contain the evaluations, or extra stuff that can tag along with some questions.
They can however contain information that both parties agree must be true. For example, when asking about the use of an IT system, you can ask about support, software, backups and a whole load of other things.
So there is a useful outcome that being contextually clean helps with. Keeping my own thoughts, ideas and values out of a question, but still be able to ask about details.
What’s Clean Language good for?
There are 3 examples use cases in this article.
Use Case 1
Clean Language helps with communication problems by accurately being able to get a model of what’s in someones head.
Models can be of an IT system, a book, a PhD, journey or a business plans.
Have you ever said ‘Oh now I see’ when it’s too late? Or know that someone has a great idea in them. They just need to get it out.
Drawing your ideas can supercharge communications.
Contextually Clean Questions in this context visualising ideas might be
What’s the main idea here?
Who is it for?
How does it work?
Is there anything else that could happen here?
What needs to happen before this bit? (pointing)
What’s missing?
Unclean Questions might be
So what’s your big idea?
Why isn’t it an app?
This is just <idea> right?
Maybe it’s not a big idea? Just is an evaluation - it’s not important.
Using Clean Language in High Pressure Situations
Use case 2
In a Priority 1 IT incident at an organisation where I was working I had to get an accurate picture of the tech landscape quickly. If we were going to fix the problem, we needed to know what the whole thing looked like.
That information was spread over 5 experts knowledge. I used contextually clean questions to build a visual that contained everyones expertise - without my ideas or understanding getting in the way.
Everyone recognised their code and infrastructure in the visual and saw how it all fit together.
Clean Language helped discussions get to the point quickly, without my evaluations causing issues.
Contextually Clean Questions about an large IT System
What do you know about here?
Where does your stuff fit in with everything else?
How is it configured?
Are there bits that are missing?
What problems does this avoid?
Unclean Questions might be
Which part of this mess is yours?
Is this crazy bit anything to do with you?
How does this even work?
Maybe it’s not a mess to someone who understands it. It’s maybe not crazy.
What do you want?
Use case 3
It’s also a common story in IT that organisations spend time developing the wrong thing.
Customers might only know what they want when they see it. And sometimes it’s not code that is required at all.
Introducing Clean Questions to the people that talk to customers helps you understand the right thing to build.
So what do you want help with?
How does that work now?
What happened before / after this bit
When you say ‘<it term> what would you see happening?
When all of this, what do you want to have happen?
What’s wrong with Clean Language?
Clean Language is clearly not dirty, vulgar or contaminated, right?
And that’s the problem. Clean Language is a terrible name. It might suggests to folks that when they’re not ‘being Clean’ there’s something wrong with them.
The name Clean Language is judgemental. So when I talk about being clean, it’s natural to think it’s something you already do.
If you were clean all the time people might think you were a bit weird. A bit non comital. Never saying what you think, but always asking others. You might be seen as a bit cold and robotic.
Being ‘Clean’ is not some morally superior stance to take all the time.
When not to use Clean Language…
I’ve given 3 cases above where I’ve used Clean Language successfully.
What wouldn’t I use Contextually Clean Language for:
Asking a question to challenge an idea.
Building relationships with empathy.
To explain what I thought about something.
How Clean Language can help
I’ve covered what Contextually Clean Language is, what contextually clean questions are. I’ve covered what’s wrong and when not to use Contextually Clean Language.
Do you need to find out
what someone thinks?
what someone does?
the problem someone has?
someones needs?
Do you want to understand
A process
A journey
A situation where you don’t know where to start?
Contextually Clean Language is an amazing approach for getting yourself, and your own understanding out of the way, and to understand things how someone else understands something.