Open-ended Questions

An opportunity exists for a crisis responder to gain additional information from the person in crisis by using open-ended questions. These questions allow the person to talk. When the person in crisis is talking the responder is better able to understand the person’s intent. If the crisis responder is doing all the talking opportunities are lost to engage the person and facilitate a resolution of the situation. Effective open-ended questions are simple and straight forward but allow the person to answer the question and provide additional information to the responder. An open-ended question might be, “Can you tell me more about that?” or “Could you tell me more about what happened to you today.”