DEV Community

Matthew Reinbold
Matthew Reinbold

Posted on • Originally published at matthewreinbold.com

2 1

When Reviewing Others’ Work, Ask ‘How’ Instead of ‘Why’ Questions

A picture of a card from the '75 Tools for Creative Thinking Deck'

In my API governance experience, I interviewed a lot of teams. The purpose of those chats was always to reach a better understanding of the problem. A better understanding leads to better design. Most of the time, these conversations were amicable, easy-going affairs. One contributing factor that kept these affairs from becoming confrontations was when I switched from asking "Why" to asking "How" questions.

When you ask someone "Why" they do or don't do something, you'll inevitably provoke a defensive response. For example, when trying to learn more about somebody's API practice, I could ask:

  • "Why don't you have 100% contract test coverage?"
  • "Why aren't your API descriptions captured in a single, discoverable place?"
  • "Why did you produce so many microservices?"
  • "Why is your domain terminology inconsistent?"
  • And the classic catch-all, "Why did you do it this way?"

Each of those may be a legitimate question. However, the nature of the question comes across as a request for justification. Worse, answers to a why question immediately entrenches the person in a list, of their own making, of confirmation bias. What was supposed to be a positive discourse has turned exhausting, as each side attempts to prove that their approach is superior.

Asking "how" is much more productive. Reframing our points from earlier changes the questions to:

  • "How do you detect breaking changes in production?"
  • "How do developers discover and learn how to use APIs in your area?"
  • "How do you manage the greater complexity with your number of microservices?"
  • "How do you describe this concept within your domain?"
  • "How did you work through the difficult decisions in this design?"

Both the 'how' and 'why' examples address, roughly, the same areas of concern. However, the 'how' questions are more likely to result in people talking in greater length, detail, and thoughtfulness. They assist us in going further in exploration.

Asking quality, open-ended questions creates a better rapport and a clearer idea of how to help. And the faster we get to help, the sooner our customers will find success.

The next time you feel the urge to ask "why", try reaching for "how" instead.

API Trace View

How I Cut 22.3 Seconds Off an API Call with Sentry 🕒

Struggling with slow API calls? Dan Mindru walks through how he used Sentry's new Trace View feature to shave off 22.3 seconds from an API call.

Get a practical walkthrough of how to identify bottlenecks, split tasks into multiple parallel tasks, identify slow AI model calls, and more.

Read more →

Top comments (0)

Billboard image

The Next Generation Developer Platform

Coherence is the first Platform-as-a-Service you can control. Unlike "black-box" platforms that are opinionated about the infra you can deploy, Coherence is powered by CNC, the open-source IaC framework, which offers limitless customization.

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay