Why I don’t ask ‘Why’ in a negotiation

‘Why?’ feels like a perfectly reasonable question - it seems like the obvious way to understand what's driving the other side. Why do they need that? Why can’t they move on price? Why have they rejected our proposal? Why is that deadline important?

But I rarely ask ‘Why?’ in a negotiation.

Not because understanding motivation is unimportant. Quite the opposite. I want to understand what's driving the other side as deeply as I possibly can. The problem is that ‘Why?’ doesn’t always encourage exploration. Very often, it encourages justification.

Think about a child being asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ The instinctive response is rarely a thoughtful examination of motivations and alternatives. It's more likely to be defensive: ‘I don’t know’, ‘He started it’, or ‘I just did.’ Adults are rather more sophisticated, but the underlying psychology doesn’t necessarily disappear.

Imagine a customer tells you, ‘We need a 10% reduction.’ You ask, ‘Why do you need 10%?’ They now must explain why 10% is reasonable. They may tell you about budgets, procurement targets, competitors or internal expectations. Some of that information may be useful. But something else has happened. You have invited them to build the case for their own position.

And the better they explain it, the more psychologically invested they can become in it.

The same thing happens when discussing something that has already occurred. ‘Why did you choose the other supplier?’ ‘Why didn’t you involve us earlier?’ ‘Why did you reject the proposal?’ The question can easily sound accusatory, even when that isn’t the intention. Instead of encouraging exploration, the question can end up encouraging the other person to defend the decision they have already made.

That's the fundamental problem I have with ‘Why?’. It can encourage somebody either to defend the past or justify the future. Neither necessarily moves the negotiation forward.

There is another difficulty. Once somebody has explained why their position makes sense, moving away from it becomes harder. Cialdini’s principle of Commitment and Consistency helps explain this. People tend to behave consistently with positions they have previously expressed.

So, ‘We need 10%,’ becomes, ‘We need 10% because our budget has been reduced and procurement requires us to deliver a saving.’ That second statement is considerably more difficult to retreat from. They haven't simply stated a position anymore. They have explained and reinforced it.

That may have accidentally turned an opening position into a commitment.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t explore what sits behind the 10%. I absolutely would. I just think there are better questions.

Instead of asking, ‘Why do you need a 10% reduction?’ try, ‘Tell me more about what you’re trying to achieve’ or ‘What would success look like for you?’ or ‘How does this fit with your wider objectives?’

These questions are trying to uncover the same information, but they point the conversation somewhere different - they encourage exploration rather than defence. They can reveal interests without unnecessarily reinforcing positions.

That distinction becomes even more important when there's pushback.

Suppose somebody says, ‘There’s no way we can agree to a three-year term.’ Asking, ‘Why not?’ may simply invite them to produce reasons why a three-year agreement is impossible.

Instead, I might ask, ‘Under what circumstances could a longer-term agreement work?’ or ‘What would I need to do to make that possible?’ or ‘Which aspects of a longer-term agreement give you the greatest concern?’

Now we’re not asking them to justify no. We are exploring the circumstances under which yes might become possible.

And that is a very different conversation.

Good negotiation questions don't simply collect information. They shape the conversation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the word ‘Why?’. Sometimes it will produce exactly the information you need. But I think negotiators use it too casually because we assume that asking for a reason is the same thing as encouraging someone to think.

It isn't always.

A question can make somebody curious about possibilities. Or it can make them more certain about the position they already hold.

That’s why I tend to favour questions such as ‘Tell me more’, ‘What would success look like?’, ‘How does this align with your objectives?’, ‘Under what circumstances could that work?’, ‘What would I need to do?’ and ‘Which aspects give you concern?’

Great questions should be curious. They should uncover information, expose possibilities and create movement.

Because if your question is making somebody more certain about the position they already hold, it probably isn’t helping you negotiate.

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