Problem Solving: The Intention

We’ve covered why questions matter and how to provide context. Now let’s explore the second pillar of good questions: The Intention.

What Do You Really Want?

Whenever someone asks me “How are you?” through chat at work I can immediately identify it as a ping method - checking if you are available to then follow up with something more important. But if it is someone close to us, probably (and hopefully) they really care about the answer you give to that question. As I said before, we will always try to become efficient and guess what the intention of the other person is. Whilst a lot of times we could be quite accurate, a misread of intentions could result in a waste of both people’s time.

For many years now, I started perceiving the adjective “intentional” as something positive (e.g. I prefer someone to intentionally offend me, because at least, I see clearly what the other person’s intentions were). Intentional/Deliberate practice is better than practice itself and intentional communication is usually better than communication. Intention implies some kind of control over, and trust me, when you are asking questions it is better to have a good grip on it.

“Great Angel, good philosophical topic, but how can we get better at it?” Well, if for context we wanted to answer about what information do we need to understand the question, in the intention we want to be explicit about “What kind of answer do you want?”

Avoid Circling Around the Question

A question that feels like many questions dies of hunger.

Example of a question with many questions: “Why is the website slow and also can you tell me if we should migrate to the new framework and what do you think about the design changes and should we hire more developers?”

You will probably get half an answer and most likely that half won’t belong to the question you really wanted answered. Don’t be afraid of omitting some follow-up questions until you get the answer you are looking for to avoid distractions. Ask one clear question and you will get one clear answer.

Better approach:

“Why is the website slow during peak hours?” (Wait for answer)
Then: “Given the performance issues, should we consider migrating to the new framework as part of the solution?”
Then: “If we migrate, how do the proposed design changes fit into that timeline?”

Each question gets its moment, its answer, and its proper consideration.

Have in Mind What Type of Answer You Would Like

In the same way we can have many kinds of problems out there, we have many kinds of answers. Would you expect an introspective answer? Do you want a decision? Would you like to have some brainstorming? Is it a “Yes/No” question?

Being clear about the type of answer you want helps the other person frame their response appropriately.

Types of answers you might want:

Decision/Recommendation:

“Should we use MongoDB or PostgreSQL for this project?”
“Do you recommend deploying this to production today or waiting until Monday?”

Explanation/Understanding:

“Can you explain how the authentication flow works in this system?”
“What’s the difference between these two approaches?”

Brainstorming/Options:

“What are some ways we could improve the performance of this query?”
“How would you approach solving this caching problem?”

Yes/No/Validation:

“Is my understanding correct that users can only see their own data?”
“Does this implementation follow our coding standards?”

Step-by-step guidance:

“How do I set up the development environment for this project?”
“What’s the process for deploying a hotfix?”

Example of being explicit about intention:

❌ “What do you think about this code?”
✅ “Can you review this code for potential security issues?” (looking for specific feedback)
✅ “What are your thoughts on the overall architecture of this solution?” (looking for high-level opinion)
✅ “Is there a simpler way to achieve this?” (looking for alternatives)

Choose the Right Target

Part of problem solving is also about time management. The less time you dedicate asking questions to someone who won’t provide you with answers (unless you are just rubber ducking), the better. Of course, we don’t always know the knowledge of the other person and we may discover as we ask, but even in those cases, starting by knowing how much context / knowledge the other person has will probably be more efficient so that you can formulate the right questions (or avoid asking them at all ;)).

Questions to ask yourself before asking others:

Does this person have experience with this technology/domain?
Is this the right level of question for this person? (Don’t ask a junior about architecture decisions, don’t ask a senior about syntax errors you could Google)
Does this person have time to give me the kind of answer I need?
Would documentation or a quick search answer this faster?

Being considerate of your target: “Hey, do you have experience with WebSockets? I have a question about implementing real-time features” is better than diving straight into “How do I fix error XYZ in Socket.io?” to someone who might not even know what Socket.io is.

Think About Your Intention, Always

Even when we ask unclear questions, we could have an intention behind - for example, to annoy someone or misdirect them. But when it comes to problem solving it is very unlikely that you want to have ambiguity. Dedicate some time to know what kind of answers you are looking for and create questions that can guide those answers.

Lastly, don’t forget that questions are the most powerful tool for problem solving. Being intentional when self-questioning is also critical for this process.

Self-questioning with intention:

❌ “Why doesn’t this work?” (vague, frustrated)
✅ “What am I assuming about how this function behaves?” (intentional, focused on assumptions)
✅ “What’s the simplest test I can run to validate my hypothesis?” (intentional, focused on experimentation)

When you’re iterating through a problem, being clear about your intention at each step helps you make progress rather than spinning in circles.

Putting Intention into Practice

Let’s see how adding clear intention transforms questions:

Without intention: “What do you think about microservices?”

With intention: “We’re currently running a monolith with ~50k daily active users and facing scaling issues. Should we consider migrating to microservices, or are there simpler solutions we should try first? I’m looking for a recommendation based on our scale and team size (5 engineers).”

The second version makes clear:

You want a recommendation (type of answer)
You want it evaluated against your specific constraints
You’re open to alternative solutions
You’ve provided context to inform the answer

This is how context and intention work together to create questions that actually get you the answers you need.

Previous in the series:

Next in the series: Problems in the Unknown - What to do when you’re starting from zero knowledge

PS: Eat your veggies 🌱