Matt Galligan said to me, nearly a decade ago, “When you ask pointed questions, you can get real answers. It is so much easier for me to knock out an email with a thoughtful response when a question is asked.”

Make the question direct, to the point, and easy for the other person to respond to.

Counterintuitively, one of the best answers you can receive is, “That’s not a good idea,” “Don’t do that,” or, “That doesn’t sound right to me.”