Page 16 - Part A

Counselling Skills

5. Questioning

As you move through the counselling process, questioning skills become important.
There are two types of questions:

1. Open-ended

2. Closed-ended.

Open-ended questions are used to:

• Begin an interview

• Encourage the client to elaborate

• Elicit specific examples

• Motivate the client to communicate.

Open-ended questions are those that cannot be easily answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or
a very short phrase. They are not normally used to gain specific information, but to
explore feelings and thoughts. For example:

• ‘How is that important to you?’

• ‘How did you feel when that happened?’

• ‘What are your reasons for saying that?’

• ‘Why do you think you responded in that way?’

Closed-ended questions are used to:

• Obtain specific information

• Identify the parameters of an issue

• Break into a narrative

• Define the boundaries of a narrative.

Closed-ended questions can be easily answered with ‘yes’, ‘no’ or a very short phrase.
For example:

• ‘What is the time?’
• ‘Have you got far to go?’

• ‘Do you want that?’
• ‘How will you pay for that?’

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