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If you want to deliver data work that actually matters, then focus your energy on asking better questions.

Too many data leaders tell me the same thing, that their teams sprint into ‘solution mode’ the moment a stakeholder looks in their direction.

It usually goes like this: A stakeholder says they want a dashboard. Next, your team is arguing about data models, warehouse architecture and whether it should be built in Power BI or Looker.

Meanwhile, no one has paused for even a second to ask what on earth this dashboard is meant to change inside the business?

Or is it even a dashboard they need at all??? (hint: usually no)

Unfortunately, when you skip the questioning part, you end up building beautiful, shiny solutions that solve precisely nothing.

You burn time. You burn trust. And your team compounds its reputation as a gigantic money pit (never a good look).

It’s today’s edition of Strategies For Effective Data Leadership, I’m going to take you through the cost of not asking questions and deep dive into strategies for asking better ones.

But first, let’s all get poll-yamorous 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Here are a few consequences of not interrogating a business ask properly:

Impact 1: You build something that looks good but fixes nothing
Perfect design. Zero strategic impact. No stakeholder alignment.

Impact 2: You trap your team in endless rework
Not asking great questions and understanding the challenge from the start means you’ll be constantly iterating as feedback is drip fed.

Impact 3: You create a dependency loop
Stakeholders lose confidence in your work. They’ll start checking everything and question every single number. You and your teams credibility tanks big time.

Impact 4: You reinforce the stereotype that data teams are technical operators
Executives start to believe the narrative that data people cannot think commercially. Which is ironic because most of us absolutely can. We just do not slow down long enough to ask the right questions.

Good news. You can fix all of this. It starts with becoming the kind of data leader who interrogates the business problem properly before even thinking about solutions.

Before you touch SQL, open a Jira ticket or architect anything, you need to slow everything down. Your job is to understand the business context so deeply that the right solution becomes obvious.

Here is how to do that.

1. Always ask what outcome they want, not what product they think they need
If they say they want a dashboard, ask what they want to happen as a result of that dashboard.

Do not let them anchor you to the output. Pull them back to the outcome.

2. Ask them to show you the pain, not their wish list
Real business needs are born out of pain.
Ask:

3. Ask what they have tried before and why it did not work
Executives hate admitting when something flopped. But you need this context. It helps you avoid repeating the sins of the past and wasting everyone’s time.

4. Ask who owns the decision and who is affected by it
A single request often touches multiple teams. If you do not map the ecosystem at the start, you will be slapped with conflicting needs halfway through the project. make sure you understand the lay of the land.

5. Ask what success looks like and what failure costs
This one changes everything.
If the business cannot articulate what winning looks like, the project is no worth pursuing. And if they cannot articulate what is at stake if nothing changes, then it probably is not a real priority.

6. Translate everything into a commercial frame
Once you have the answers above, turn the problem into a commercial statement.
For example:
Instead of building a churn dashboard, you are helping the business retain 3 percent more customers in Q1 and protecting seven figures of revenue.

Now the work actually matters.

If you want to be seen as a strategic data leader, you cannot skip the questioning. Better questions lead to clearer problems. Clearer problems lead to higher impact solutions. And higher impact solutions turn your data team into a strategic partner rather than a ticket service.

Tristan Burns

Find me on LinkedIn or Book a 1:1 call