# Why a direct survey question gets a polite answer [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-13 updated: 2026-10-13 language: en reading time: 4 min topic: Marketing & sales source booklet: [Who Are You Actually Talking To](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/publics-surveys-image) A direct question gets the answer the person thinks you want to hear, and a question that touches what bothers them gets their real reaction. A direct question usually gets a polite answer. The person in front of you can sidestep it easily and give you what they think you want to hear. A question that touches what bothers them is much harder to sidestep, so it gets what they actually think. That sounds like a technical detail of wording. In practice it makes the difference between a survey that teaches you something and a list of compliments, and you are going to build a message from those answers. ## First you know what you want to find out The source behind the booklet starts with some deliberately crude writing. Before you word anything nicely, you write down three very direct questions that you want answered. Those questions are private, and they go out to nobody. They exist so that you know what you are really trying to find out, before you start polishing. Suppose what you want to know is why a particular person did not buy from you. Nobody would put it that way in conversation, and it is exactly the information you need. Or suppose you want to know how much a person is willing to pay. That is too direct to ask, and essential to know. Most people skip this stage and start at the final wording. The result is a nicely phrased question whose purpose nobody can make out. The blunt question stays with you and keeps you on course, and every wording that goes out has to find out what it asks. ## Why a direct question falls short Here comes the reasoning, and it matters more than the technique. According to the source, a person can manoeuvre around a direct question and give you a polite answer. When the question involves their emotion, they cannot avoid reacting. Put simply, to a direct question people answer what they think you expect to hear. To a question that touches what bothers them, they answer what they think. What you want to know stays the same. What changes is the way you ask, so that a polite reply is hard to give and an honest reply is easy. That is why the source treats the second stage as translation: “now you translate them into the field of human emotion.” The blunt question you wrote for yourself becomes a question that reaches for what troubles them, instead of what they think of you. Ask what is annoying them about this at the moment, and the answers that come back are real, because the question invites a complaint and asks for no grade. The opposite example is asking what they think of your service. Almost everybody will answer **excellent, thank you**. That answer is pleasant to hear and teaches you nothing. ## Why it matters so much Suppose an owner asks his customers what they think of his service and receives **excellent, thank you** from every one of them. He closes the survey feeling good, and he has no sentence to build a message from. Now suppose he asks what is annoying them at the moment. The answers are less comfortable, and they are real, which is what he was after. ## While you find out, you do not explain The source has instructions for the conversation itself, and the booklet marks one of them as the hardest. It is also the one most tied to polite answers. The person running the survey handles nothing. He asks, writes down the answer, and notes the reaction too, such as who was curt, who lit up and who sighed. According to the booklet, that is data too. So you hold back from explaining, from correcting and from selling. You are there to find out, and persuasion belongs to a different conversation. The reason ties into everything above. Suppose an owner cannot hold back and answers an objection halfway through a survey. The customer switches into polite mode, and every answer after that is worthless. The moment you start explaining, the survey is over. You can go back to that person later as a seller, just not in the same conversation. The booklet has, for this chapter, a table of direct questions beside the version you can actually ask, three instructions for the conversation itself, and two exercises, one for building and one for translating. Self-check questions follow, and the next chapter deals with what happens after the conversations: how to count the answers. Before you ask a customer what they think, check whether your question leaves room to be polite. If it does, polite is the answer you will get. - [Who Are You Actually Talking To](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/publics-surveys-image): Who your audiences are, and what each one wants to hear. That is enough to stop wasting a budget. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/why-direct-survey-questions-get-polite-answers) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/why-direct-survey-questions-get-polite-answers)