Keep a Poker Face and Don't Answer Any Questions

June 2004

You read that right. Don’t answer questions.

Both of these ideas—keeping a poker face and not answering questions—have to do with safety. Not safety for you, but safety for the client. Yes, I am still on the topic of building good client relationships!

Your job is infinitely easier when a client feels safe with you. The client will share information and resources, say hello to you in the hall, forgive you if you mess up… the list of benefits goes on and on. If the client doesn’t feel safe, your job can be very hard.

Keep a Poker Face

On one of my first audits, I conducted an interview with a low-level manager. I was conducting what my supervisor thought was a routine interview—unlikely to cause any problems. The interview questionnaire asked if the auditee had purchased vehicles, boats, or planes in the past three years. (Why the questionnaire asked that, I have no idea.)

Strangely enough, the manager had actually bought a boat recently. "A boat!" I spurted, "What do you need with a boat?" Well, that was the end of my involvement on the audit.

After the meeting, this manager called everyone she could think of and told them I was a spy (a spy!) and that they should not talk to me. My office had to pull me off that audit and apologize to the client.

You see, I lost my poker face. When a client says something like that to you, and you react strongly—even if you react at all—they are going to shut down. Or they might get defensive or get you in a lot of hot water. Turns out that the manager did have the authority, the right, and the justification for buying that boat. I was wrong. She was right. I was toast.

So from then on, no matter what the client said, I kept a poker face. And for those of you that know me personally, you must know this is very, very hard for me to do. On future audits I went back to my office and thought about what had been said in the interview before expressing my "expert" opinion. I did a little research to make sure that I had a good point to make before I made it. This kept me from getting kicked off any more audits. This kept me from having to backtrack and retract any statements or any crazy facial reactions.

Don’t Answer Questions

Now here is a second thing I have learned about safety—don’t answer questions. OK, maybe I need to be clearer. What I mean to say is don’t answer questions with facts.

I learned this from an old-pro seminar leader. He told me that when people ask questions they really don’t want the answer. And you know what? About 80% of the time, he’s right.

People often ask questions that they already know the answer to. Or they are asking a lead-in question, not the true question. Many times, instead of wanting an answer, they are trying to express some emotion without having to come right out and express it.

Here is an example. Let’s say the client asks you, "Why did you choose us to audit?" Now what you could do, which 80% of the time would be the wrong thing to do, is to say "We start our audit risk assessment process by choosing a methodology for dissecting the organization into its component parts. Then through interviews and research we numerically rank the risk…." And on and on and on. You spend a whole minute describing your risk assesement process because you assumed that this is what the client wanted to know.

But let’s say that the client is instead expressing anger at being chosen. He doesn’t think it is fair that he was singled out for audit when his peers are running around happy and free of scrutiny. He is trying to tell you he feels mistreated. You have chosen, unconsciously or not, to ignore his emotion and go off on a tangent sharing way too many boring details. As you speak, this client is probably feeling even more misunderstood and angry than before. By the time you are finished, he may be fit to be tied.

So what do you do? Well, first you take a split second to gauge what the client is feeling. Look at his posture, pay attention to the tone of his voice. And then return to him with a question. You see, don’t answer the question… not yet anyway.

Here is how the interaction might go if you try to resolve the emotion instead of answer the question with fact:

Client: " Why did you choose us to audit?"

You: "Do you want me to describe our audit selection process?"

Client: "No, not really. I just don’t understand how I was chosen and others were left alone."

You: "So you feel that we aren’t being fair in how we select areas to audit."

Client: "Well, I wouldn’t exactly say THAT, but I do feel singled out. Did I do something to cause this audit?"

You: "Oh. No, we aren’t looking for anything in particular and we aren’t here as a result of any problem, it is just your turn. The others will have their turn, too. Maybe not this year, but we will get to them. I can show you our long-range plan, if you like. We presented it to the board last month."

Client: "No, I don’t need to see it. I just wanted to make sure."

You: "So are you OK with going ahead with the interview."

Client: "Yes. Thanks."

You: "So have you purchased any boats lately?"

What happened here is the auditor did not rush to gloss over the clients concerns. The auditor uncovered the emotional concerns of the client and helped to resolve them. The auditor also checked to make sure that the client’s emotions had been resolved before they moved on.

So in answering or NOT ANSWERING questions, follow the following guidelines:

• Don’t leap right into explaining the facts
• Gauge the emotions of the questioner
• Ask the questioner a clarifying question to ensure that you will be answering the question they are really asking or resolving the feeling they are really expressing
• Allow the questioner to express their feelings
• Do something to either acknowledge or resolve their feelings (sometimes you can’t resolve their feelings, you can only acknowledge and empathize with their feelings)
• Make sure they are clear before you move on

Wow, that is a lot of work. But, talk about a safety builder! If you respect the client’s feelings like that on a regular basis, they are going to think you hung the moon. They might actually begin to like you or something crazy like that.

I have a few more points to make about client relations that I will make in next month’s newsletter. Stay safe—safe to talk to, that is!