Reasoning Inquiry

The basic ideas behind Reasoning Inquiry are, in a nutshell:

• Much of the reasoning behind people's actions is automatic or "tacit", that is, unrecognized until they asked to reflect on the subject.
• People base many of their actions on inferences or impressions from partial information.  Such inferences contain errors.
• In normal consulting interviews, people omit the tacit information and often collapse inferences and "facts".   Clarifying these distinctions often yields valuable insights into their actions and opinions. 

Reasoning Inquiry Interviews

A Reasoning Inquiry interview will sound much like a normal conversation, with more emphasis in certain areas.  For example:

• Asking for and discussing examples that illustrate respondent's opinions.
• Testing of the researcher's own inferences and "inner dialogue."
• Taking extra effort to understand apparent gaps or assumptions in the respondent's reasoning.
• Asking respondent's for their reasoning, and exploring it.
• Asking respondent's to reflect on the origins of their ideas and actions.
• Allowing extra time to reflect on the theories respondents have about companies, products, market trends, etc.

Because of the added exploration, these interviews tend to take 30-50% longer than "traditional" interviews. To improve accuracy - and to free the consultant's mind to concentrate on the process - we tape record the interviews and transcribe all or part of them. These transcripts become a rich source of quotations to anchor conclusions made from the analysis.

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