Questioning Skills: Using Probing Questions

Course Overview

This course is provided by Learning4Business. Having completed this course you should be able to:

• use probing questions to elicit information and opinions that prove resistant to simple open questions
• use summary questions to clarify answers, demonstrate personal understanding and control difficult people or situations

Open questions enable people to gather information and seek feelings and opinions. Sometimes, however, people do not volunteer a full response to open questions, and this can lead to frustration for the questioner. This course will enable you to ’open up’ reluctant respondents and find out what lies behind an initial, and perhaps superficial, answer.

Being skilled in asking probing questions increases the competence of those who are already able to use open questions. An ability to use probing questions, therefore, adds value to the benefits already accruing from open questioning skills.

The course is divided into 2 sections covering the following areas:

• the function of probing questions
• the 5 types of probing question and how to use them

How It Works

The information below is specific to this particular course. If you would like a more general guide to how our purchasing and learning works please visit the Four Easy Steps page which should tell you all you need to know.

Alternatively; if you have a specific question or concern why not contact us directly ?

What

This is an online course, all the training will be taken through your browser window. There will be no face-to-face sessions with instructors nor will you receive any training material through the post. If you wish you may print out any page of the training material, and may also print the notes you took during the training.

You can also revisit the training material at any time, even after you have completed the course.

How

The material for this course has been broken down into several smaller lessons, each lesson dealing with a specific area of the overall subject.

The lesson consist of a series of pages in which an instructor will talk you through the lesson material at a pace that suits you. Pages may also include supporting pictures, graphs, animation or extra sounds to help with the learning where appropriate. Some lessons will include challenges/quizzes to help you keep in touch and interested in the material.

Lessons can be taken in any order and each lesson may be PAUSED and RESUMED at any stage. When all lessons in the course have been completed our system will realise and automatically record that you have successfully completed the course

When

This course is delivered fully online allowing you to learn at your own pace, however an average duration would be 2 hours.