Asking the right questions: a guide to critical thinking

The benefit of asking the right question

What are the issue and the conclusion?

What are the reasons?

Which words or phrases are ambiguous?

What are the value conflicts and assumptions?

What are the description assumptions?

Are there any fallacies in the reasoning?

How good is the evidence: intuition, appeals to authority, and testimonials?

How good is the evidence: personal observation, case studies, research studies, and analogies?

Are there rival causes?

Are the statistics deceptive?

What significant information is omitted?

What reasonable conclusions are possible?

Practice and review.