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‘Question Conference’ connotes a group of people who have come together with different views to pose questions and provide answers to these questions and consult with each other on controversial issues.

The definition is as follows: “A method designed to generate the questions likely to express in the best possible fashion the issues for which solutions are required and/or realizing the plans considered to be implemented, and to produce answers to the questions formulated by the collective mind of the stakeholders.”

The distinctive characteristics of this method are; its objective to transform a given issue into a series of questions (see Right Questions)  and its requirement to provide answers to them in accordance with the correct questioning methods.

Questions are determined by the participants’ selection from among a set of questions that are generated by brain storming, picked up by workshops and processed in a logical order. Questions determined in this way become explicit and clear and their answers will be to a great extent inherent in them.

The “solution” on the other hand, is defined as suppression or alleviation of the pain created (due to an undesirable situation) to an acceptable level. This would be an arduous process especially if the issue at hand has multi-stakeholders.The question itself may under such circumstances become almost inexplicable, let alone the actualization of a satisfactory solution. The reason for this is the likely difference in each stakeholder’s own definition of a given term on which he or she will be partial on insisting that the ‘only logical’ core meaning should be his or hers.

In such similar conditions, the way to proceed will be to break down the issue at hand into a series of questions in order to give a clear account of the matter. Only if we achieve this, we canarrive at a proper solution by way of reconciliation1. This method is what we call the ‘Question Conference’.

This is the only method that can be relied on in working out a solution for controversial issues.Giving the stakeholders the floor in turn and listening to their interminable and tautological arguments will not avail an agreement although at first glance this may seem like a good idea. As a matter of fact, each argument contains a series of propositions and the responding participants can hardly be expected to be convinced.

Approach to the majority of issues either social or public, made as has been mentioned here, will give rise to new questions rather than solving the matter in hand (See Chemistry of Problems).

[1] See the related document.