Open-ended questions examples: 150 for work, interviews and surveys
150 open-ended questions examples, sorted by where you'll ask them. Copy a whole group in one click, and see 25 closed questions rewritten as open ones.
What is an open-ended question?
An open-ended question is one that can't be answered with yes, no or a single fact. It asks for a reason, a story or an opinion, so it usually starts with what, how, tell me about or describe. A closed-ended question does the opposite: it limits the answer to yes or no, a number or a pick from a list. For an example of open-ended questions beside closed ones, here are three quick pairs:
- Closed: Did the launch go well?Open: How did the launch go from your side?
- Closed: Are you happy with your role?Open: What would make your role more satisfying?
- Closed: Do you have experience with clients?Open: Tell me about a client you enjoyed working with.
Below are 150 open ended question examples for work, grouped by situation, with a Copy button for each group. For quick mood checks at the start of a meeting, our check-in questions are a better fit; for questions that test a plan or a decision, see our critical thinking questions.
Open vs closed questions: when to use each
Neither kind is better. Closed questions measure; open questions explain. Most good conversations and surveys use both.
| Aspect | Closed-ended | Open-ended |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | Yes, no, a number or a pick from a list | Sentences in the person's own words |
| Best for | Facts, decisions, counting and comparing | Reasons, stories, ideas and feelings |
| Typical start | Do, did, is, are, can, will, which | What, how, tell me about, describe |
| In a survey | Quick to answer and easy to chart | Slower to answer and to read, but explains the numbers |
| Risk | You only learn what you thought to ask | Vague answers if the question is too broad |
A simple rule, with closed and open questions examples: use a closed question when you need a fact or a decision (“Can you start Monday?”), and an open one when you need to understand something (“What would make Monday hard?”). The strongest pattern is a closed question followed by an open one: a rating, then “What's the main reason for your score?”
150 open-ended questions examples, by situation
Seven groups, from one-on-ones to icebreakers. Each Copy button copies its whole group as a numbered list, ready for an agenda, a doc or a survey form.
25 open-ended questions for one-on-ones
Pick two or three per meeting. The best one-on-ones are mostly the other person talking.
- What's been on your mind since we last met?
- What's taking more of your time than it deserves right now?
- What would you take off your plate tomorrow if you could?
- Where are you stuck, and what have you tried so far?
- Which part of your work feels most meaningful lately?
- How could I make these one-on-ones more useful for you?
- What's something I do as your manager that you'd like me to keep doing?
- When have I made your job harder without meaning to?
- Think of your best week here so far. What made it good?
- Which skill would make the biggest difference to your work if you got better at it?
- If your job looked different a year from now, what would you want to have changed?
- Which decisions would you like more say in?
- What would you like to be known for on this team?
- What have you wanted to raise but haven't found the right moment for?
- Which of your goals feels least realistic right now, and why?
- How would you describe what success looks like in your role right now?
- What's a recent piece of work you're proud of, and what made it go well?
- What kind of support would help most on your current project?
- What do you know about our customers that I might not?
- Which tasks leave you energized, and which leave you flat?
- What would you like to learn from someone on another team?
- How is the balance between meetings and focused work for you at the moment?
- What do you need from me before we meet again?
- Who here would you like to work with more, and on what?
- What's keeping you busy outside work these days?
20 open-ended questions for team meetings and retros
For the end of a sprint, a project or a meeting that went sideways. Ask one, then let the room answer before you add your view.
- What did we spend time on that turned out not to matter?
- Which moment in this sprint would you replay, and what would you do differently in it?
- How did the work feel from your seat compared with how it looked on the plan?
- What's a question we never asked that we should have?
- Which handoff in this project cost us the most time?
- What did we say yes to that we should have pushed back on?
- How did we make decisions on this project, and how did that work for you?
- Which of our tools or rituals helped this time, and which just got in the way?
- What made it easier or harder for you to ask for help?
- What are you hearing from customers or other teams that we should discuss?
- What's the conversation this team keeps putting off?
- How did the workload spread across the team, and how did that feel?
- What would have made this meeting a better use of your time?
- What's one thing from today's discussion you'd like us to follow up on?
- Which part of the plan are you least confident in, and why?
- What's the most useful thing we learned about our customers this cycle?
- Where did communication break down, and what would have caught it sooner?
- What did this project teach you about working with each other?
- What did we underestimate, and what made it hard to see at the time?
- What does the next milestone need from each of us?
25 open-ended interview questions
Behavioral open-ended questions for interviews, each asking for a real example. Follow each with "What did you do next?" and "What was the result?"
- Walk me through your career so far and what brought you to this role.
- What made you apply for this role in particular?
- Tell me about a project you're proud of. What was your part in it?
- Describe a time you had to learn something new quickly. How did you go about it?
- Tell me about a time you had to deliver news someone didn't want to hear.
- How would your last team describe working with you?
- What kind of work environment brings out your best work?
- Tell me about a project that didn't go to plan. What did you do?
- How do you decide what to work on when everything feels urgent?
- How do you explain a complicated topic to someone without your background?
- Describe a time you worked with someone whose style was very different from yours.
- What would you want to accomplish in your first 90 days here?
- Tell me about feedback you received that changed how you work.
- How do you keep people informed when a deadline starts slipping?
- Tell me about a time you improved a process nobody asked you to fix.
- How do you approach a task when the instructions are vague?
- Describe a stretch when you had too much on your plate. How did you handle it?
- Tell me about a goal you set for yourself and how you reached it.
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with a decision at work. How did you handle it?
- How do you prepare for an important meeting or presentation?
- Tell me about someone you trained or mentored. How did you approach it?
- Tell me about a mistake you made at work and what you did in the next 24 hours.
- What do you expect to find hardest about this role?
- Where do you want your career to go over the next few years, and how does this role fit?
- What would you like to know about the team that we haven't covered?
20 open-ended employee engagement survey questions
Use one or two at the end of a survey, or right after a rating so people can explain their score.
- What's one change that would make the biggest difference to your day-to-day work?
- What do you like most about working here?
- What's one policy or habit here you'd scrap tomorrow, and why?
- What gets in the way of doing your best work?
- What's one thing you'd like leadership to start doing?
- What's the main reason for the score you just gave?
- What would make you more likely to recommend this company as a place to work?
- How could your manager support you better?
- What do you wish you'd known in your first month here?
- What kind of recognition means the most to you, and when did you last get it?
- What recent moment made you glad you work here?
- What would help you grow your career here?
- In your own words, how does your work connect to the company's goals?
- What would make it easier to raise a concern here?
- What do we do well that we should protect as we grow?
- What information do you wish you got sooner, and from whom?
- What would help you keep a healthy workload over the long run?
- What would make you feel more connected to colleagues outside your team?
- What would make you want to stay here for the next two years?
- What haven't we asked that we should have?
Surveying people after an event instead? Our post event survey questions cover that, with a 5-question template.
20 open-ended questions for customer and sales conversations
Discovery questions for a first call, plus a few for customers you already have. Your job is to listen for the words they use.
- What prompted you to look into this now?
- How are you handling this today?
- What's working about your current approach, and what isn't?
- What would a great result look like six months from now?
- Who else on your side will feel the difference if this gets solved?
- How does your organization usually make a decision like this?
- What has stopped you from solving this before?
- What concerns would you need settled before moving forward?
- How will you judge whether this was worth it?
- What's the cost of leaving this as it is for another quarter?
- What did you like and dislike about the last vendor you worked with?
- Walk me through how your team handles this from start to finish.
- What's the most frustrating part of the current process?
- What other options are you weighing, and how do they compare?
- Of everything we've discussed, what matters most to you?
- What would your manager need to see to approve this?
- How did this problem first come to your attention?
- What would you like from us before our next conversation?
- What almost stopped you from buying?
- How has your work changed since you started using the product?
20 open-ended coaching and feedback questions
Questions that let the other person find the answer, so they own it. Useful for managers, mentors and peer feedback.
- What would you like to walk away from this conversation with?
- If this went perfectly, what would be different?
- What options have you ruled out, and why?
- What's in your control here, and what isn't?
- What's getting in the way of the result you want?
- What would you do with an extra hour a day on this?
- What assumptions are you making about how the other person sees this?
- If you could replay the last ten minutes of that presentation, what would you change?
- What do you think went well, and what makes you say so?
- How do you think your message landed with the client?
- Who could help you with this, and what would you ask them?
- Where do you want to be with this skill in three months?
- Which of your strengths haven't you brought to this problem yet?
- How will you know you're making progress?
- What's the hardest part of this for you?
- What did you notice about how you reacted in the moment?
- What will you do first, and when?
- What feedback have you had on this before, and what did you make of it?
- How would you like me to follow up with you on this?
- What are you taking away from our conversation?
20 open-ended icebreaker questions
Questions that invite a short story instead of a one-word answer. Give people ten seconds to think before the first person goes.
- Tell us about a time you were a complete beginner at something.
- What's a problem you love solving, at work or anywhere else?
- What's something you're bad at but enjoy anyway?
- What's the most surprising thing about the place you grew up?
- What's a compliment you still remember, and why did it stick?
- What's a job outside your field you'd try for one week, and why?
- What's an everyday object you think is brilliantly designed, and why?
- What's a spot near you that you'd take a visitor to, and why?
- What's a movie or book you think deserves more fans, and why?
- If you could spend a month learning from any expert, what would you ask them?
- What's the most useful app on your phone that nobody talks about?
- What's a question you love being asked?
- What were you obsessed with as a kid, and does any of it still show?
- What's the strangest job title you've ever come across?
- What's the funniest misunderstanding you've had at work?
- What's a skill you picked up somewhere unexpected?
- If you could add one class to every school, what would it teach?
- What's the best advice you've had from someone you only met once?
- Tell us about a time you got wonderfully lost.
- What's a ritual from a past team that you'd bring here?
For a whole session of these, sorted from light to deep, use our team building questions.
Turn closed questions into open ones: 25 rewrites
The everyday closed questions on the left get a yes, a no or a shrug. The versions on the right ask for the same information and get an actual answer.
| Instead of | Ask |
|---|---|
| Did you like the presentation? | What part of the presentation stuck with you? |
| Is the project on track? | Where is the project now, and what could knock it off track? |
| Do you have any questions? | What questions do you have so far? |
| Did the meeting go well? | How did the meeting go from where you sat? |
| Can you meet the deadline? | What would it take to hit the deadline? |
| Do you understand the task? | How would you explain the task in your own words? |
| Was the training useful? | What from the training will you use this week? |
| Do you need help? | What's slowing you down that I could take off your hands? |
| Did the customer like the demo? | How did the customer react to the demo? |
| Are you OK with this plan? | What concerns do you have about this plan? |
| Did you finish the report? | Where are you with the report? |
| Do you agree? | What's your view on this? |
| Is the new tool working? | How is the new tool changing your work so far? |
| Did you have a good weekend? | What was the best part of your weekend? |
| Would you recommend us? | What would you tell a friend about working with us? |
| Is your workload manageable? | How is your workload feeling this week? |
| Did you enjoy the event? | Which moment from the event will you remember? |
| Do you like working with your team? | What's it like working with your team day to day? |
| Is there anything else? | What else should I know? |
| Are you interested in a leadership role? | How do you see your role growing over the next couple of years? |
| Have you used spreadsheets before? | Tell me about the spreadsheets you've built or worked with. |
| Did the change cause any problems? | What effect has the change had on your work? |
| Can we cut costs on this? | Where could we spend less without hurting the result? |
| Is this the best option? | What makes this option better than the others? |
| Should we keep the weekly meeting? | What do you get out of the weekly meeting? |
The pattern behind every rewrite: swap the opening verb (do, did, is, can) for what or how, and ask about the thing you actually want to know. “Is the project on track?” gets “yes” right up until the week it isn't.
Question starters that open a conversation, and ones that close it
The first two words of a question decide most of the answer. Keep these eight close; watch for the six that shut people down.
Starters that open
- What… the all-purpose opener: what happened, what matters, what's next.
- How… for process and feelings: how it went, how you decided, how it felt.
- Tell me about… asks for a story, the richest answer you can get.
- Walk me through… for steps in order; good in interviews and sales calls.
- Describe… for a picture of a situation, a person or a result.
- What makes you say that? the follow-up that gets to the reason without sounding like a challenge.
- Help me understand… a softer way into a hard topic or a decision you disagree with.
- What else? the shortest follow-up there is. The second answer is often the real one.
Starters that close
- Do you… / Did you… invites yes or no. Swap for "How did…" or "What did…".
- Is it… / Are you… asks for a verdict. Swap for "What's it like…".
- Can you… / Could you… gets "sure" and stops. Swap for "What would it take to…".
- Don't you think…? a statement in disguise. People agree to be polite. Ask "What do you think about…" instead.
- A or B? limits the answer to your two ideas. Ask the open question first, then offer options if they're stuck.
- Why didn't you…? open, but it puts people on the defensive. Try "What got in the way of…".
How to ask open-ended questions well
A great question asked badly still gets a one-word answer. Seven habits make the difference.
- Ask one question at a time. Stacking three questions in one breath lets people answer the easiest one. Ask, then close your mouth.
- Wait longer than feels comfortable. Count to five in your head before you fill the silence. Thinking time is when the useful answer forms.
- Follow up on the answer, not your list. "Say more about that" or "What happened next?" beats moving to question four. The list is a backup.
- Don't put the answer in the question. "How frustrating was the rollout?" assumes it was. "How did the rollout go for you?" leaves room for any answer.
- Go easy on why. "Why did you do that?" can sound like blame. "What led to that?" asks the same thing without the edge.
- Use their words back. If someone says the launch was "messy", ask what made it messy. Repeating a word shows you heard it and gets you the detail.
- Summarize before you move on. "So the real blocker is the approval step, is that right?" catches misunderstandings while the person is still there to correct them.
Listening is the other half. If your team talks over each other or jumps to solutions, our active listening activities give them a way to practice it. When the conversation turns to someone's performance, pair these questions with our guide on how to give constructive feedback.
Open-ended questions in surveys
Open questions are where surveys find out why. They're also where most surveys lose people. Six rules keep them useful.
- Pair them with a rating. A score tells you how many people are unhappy. The open question right after it ("What's the main reason for your score?") tells you why.
- Keep it to a few. One to three open questions is plenty for a short pulse survey. Every extra text box costs you answers on the ones that matter.
- Make them optional. A forced text box gets "n/a" and "fine". Optional questions get fewer answers, but real ones.
- Ask about one thing at a time. "What do you think of your manager and the team?" gets half an answer. Split it in two.
- Read every answer before you count anything. Then tag each comment with one or two themes (workload, tools, communication) and count the tags. The count tells you what's common; the comments tell you what to fix.
- Share what you heard. Post the top themes, a few anonymized quotes and one or two things you will change. People write more next time when they can see the last answers went somewhere.
If you survey your team often, KraftyLab Intelligence covers both halves. It has 20 ready-made survey templates, from eNPS to burnout, people answer in the browser with no account, and you get AI summaries of the answers. It works on its own: send any survey to anyone by email. After a KraftyLab event, a short pulse survey also goes out automatically to participants with an email. For where open questions fit in the bigger picture, see our guide to employee experience.
Want the team talking without a script?
Questions work best once people are comfortable with each other. For a team that barely knows each other yet, an hour of play does it faster.
Team Discovery Challenge is a hosted scavenger hunt combined with show and tell. Teams race the clock to find unique and meaningful items, and the stories behind those items do the work an icebreaker question would. It runs about 60 minutes on Zoom by default (Teams, Google Meet or Webex on request), and a team split across time zones can run it as two sessions. Book about 2 weeks ahead.
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