The Solution-Oriented Question

Definition

A Solution-Oriented Question (SOQ) is "a piece of advice with a question mark pasted on" — grammatically a question, functionally a suggestion. Stoltzfus gives the tell: "Should you, could you, will you, don't you, can you, are you — if the second word in the question is 'you,' you're in trouble." The fix isn't to suppress the underlying insight but to trace it back to whatever fact or observation sparked it, and ask an open question about that instead of about the solution it produced.

In the Book

The book places SOQs second on its "Top Ten Asking Mistakes" list, right after plain closed questions, and treats it as a subtler variant of the same failure: the coach has an intuitive insight, silently converts it into a solution, and hands the client that solution disguised as a question ("Could you do your jogging with your spouse?"). Stoltzfus's repair technique is specific: go back to what actually made you curious, not the solution it generated. For the jogging example, the underlying insight was "this client is an extrovert but all the exercise options are solitary" — so the corrected question is "How could you involve other people in your exercise routine?", which reopens the space of answers instead of steering toward the one the coach already had in mind. The book pairs SOQs with sibling failure modes in the same list — Interpretive Questions (importing the coach's own words instead of the client's) and Leading Questions (subtly pointing toward the answer the asker wants) — as three variations on the same root problem: the asker's own conclusion leaking into the question's phrasing.

Why It Matters

A question that has already picked its preferred answer isn't really a question — it forecloses exactly the thinking it's supposed to invite, while still getting credit (from the asker) for being open-ended. The diagnostic ("is the second word 'you'?") and the repair (trace back to the raw observation, not the solution it produced, and ask about that instead) generalize past coaching to any role built on drawing out someone else's thinking — interviewing, teaching, therapy, management one-on-ones — anywhere "asking" is at risk of being telling in disguise.