Open vs closed questioning

One of the skills that I took away with me from my two days of sequential training (it's a CIPD term for a training away day, I don't know why they call them that) was a concious appreciation of open, closed and probing questions. It's not something I think about at all in day to day conversation - fortunately almost all the people I encounter are easy enough to talk to and if they're not, I can make my excuses and take my conversation elsewhere!

But listening this evening to Jeremy Paxman and Jonathan Ross interviewing politicians and celebrities respectively this evening on the television (well, the iPlayer anyway), it made me think about how you can steer conversation the way you would like it to go by framing your questions carefully and having follow up questions primed to ensure that the answers you get are either informative or entertaining, depending on what you're aiming to achieve.

I suppose I'm lucky in never having had to really think much about how to control conversation other than to be aware of when I'm talking too much, when I've interrupted and when I've repeated something I've told someone already - I hope I'm sensitive enough to realise when I should speak, and when I should listen (even if I don't always do as I should ;-) ).