Are We Answering the Wrong Question Really Well?

I’ve spent more than 35 years in competitive and market intelligence, and I’ve learned that some of the most dangerous assignments begin with a perfectly reasonable question.

“What is our competitor going to do?” “What should our price be?” “Why are we losing?” “Is this market worth entering?” “What are customers saying about us?” “Can you benchmark what everyone else is doing?”

All legitimate questions. So, naturally, we do what good intelligence professionals are trained to do. We go to work.

We search. We interview. We triangulate. We analyze. We validate. We build the deck. Then we build the executive summary of the deck. Then, occasionally, we build the executive summary of the executive summary.

And three weeks later, we walk proudly into the room with a very good answer.

There’s just one problem: we may have answered the wrong question.

Start With the Decision

Years ago, I learned to be cautious when an executive tells me exactly what they want researched. Not because they don’t know their business. Quite the opposite. They usually know their business exceptionally well.

But the question they ask isn’t always the decision they’re trying to make.

Executives don’t wake up in the morning thinking, I really need some competitive intelligence today. They wake up thinking: Should we make this investment? Can we raise our price? Are we about to lose this customer? Should we enter this market? Do we need to respond to this competitor? Are we moving too slowly? What happens if we’re wrong?

Those are decisions.

Somewhere between that decision and the intelligence team, however, the decision frequently gets converted into a research question. And that is where things can go sideways.

Consider a hypothetical request: “We need to know what Competitor X is going to do with pricing next year.”

Easy enough. We could study pricing history, talk with customers and channel partners, examine cost pressures, assess capacity, look at earnings commentary, analyze product positioning, and investigate discounting behavior. We could probably produce an excellent answer.

But before doing any of that, I’d want to ask something else: Why do you need to know?

That question sometimes creates an uncomfortable pause. Good. The pause is often where the real assignment begins.

Maybe leadership is considering a price increase. Maybe margins are deteriorating. Maybe sales is claiming a competitor is undercutting them. Maybe a major customer is threatening to switch. Maybe the company is launching a premium product. Maybe the CEO simply heard something from another CEO on a golf course.

Those are six very different intelligence assignments. Same original question. Completely different decisions.

We Are Too Eager to Be Helpful

Let me acknowledge something important here. There are very good intelligence professionals who already do this. They ask what decision leadership is trying to make. They probe the business context. They challenge assumptions. They make sure the intelligence requirement is connected to an actual decision.

That’s exactly what we should be doing. But increasingly, I see something else happening.

A request arrives already packaged. The question has been defined. The competitors have been named. The markets have been selected. The deliverables have been specified. Someone may even have decided how many slides they want.

It looks like a complete project scope. So we accept it. And that is precisely when we may need to be most careful.

A well-defined scope is not necessarily a well-defined problem.

The more complete the request appears, the easier it is to skip the conversation about why the work is being done in the first place.

I understand the temptation. We are trained to respond. Someone asks a question, and our instinct is to answer it. It feels helpful, responsive and like good client service. There is also something satisfying about receiving a clean scope and immediately getting to work.

But efficiency is only valuable if we’re working on the right thing.

The more consequential the decision, the less comfortable I am simply accepting the question—or even the entire project scope—as presented. Executives are not hiring us, or relying on their internal intelligence teams, just to execute research requests.

They need us to help them think.

There is a difference.

A research provider says, “Here is the answer to your question.”

A trusted advisor sometimes says, “Before we answer that, I want to make sure we understand the decision you’re trying to make.”

The second sentence takes considerably more confidence, especially when the person asking the original question has “Chief” somewhere in their title.

The $200,000 Answer to a $0 Question

Imagine a leadership team considering entry into an adjacent market. Someone asks, “What is the Total Addressable Market?”

Reasonable question.

A team could spend weeks developing a beautifully sourced market estimate. $4.2 billion. Maybe $4.7 billion. Perhaps $5.1 billion, depending on what we include.

There will be charts. There will definitely be a CAGR. There is always a CAGR.

But suppose the actual decision is whether this particular company can win in that market.

Now market size is useful context, but it isn’t the question that matters most.

The questions that may matter much more are: What portion of that market can we realistically serve? What could we actually capture? What unmet customer need can we uniquely solve? Why would customers switch? Which incumbent would we need to displace? What capabilities would we need that we don’t have today? How would competitors respond to our entry? What would have to be true for this investment to succeed?

You can be precisely right about it being a $5 billion market and still make a terrible decision about entering it.

That’s the danger.

Precision is not the same as relevance.

Intelligence can be extraordinarily rigorous yet strategically irrelevant.

One Question I Wish We Asked More Often

There is a question I’ve found remarkably effective over the years:

“What would you do differently depending on the answer?”

Try it.

“We need to know whether Competitor X is launching in Q4.” What would you do differently if they are?

“We need to understand whether customers like this new feature.” What would you do differently if they don’t?

“We need to know whether the competitor is building a new facility.” What would you do differently if they are?

Sometimes there is a clear answer. Excellent. Now we understand how the intelligence connects to the decision.

Other times, the response is essentially, “Well…nothing really. It would just be good to know.”

And that phrase—“good to know”—should get our attention.

We Are Not in the “Nice-to-Know” Business

I often say—and anyone who has ever taken one of my training courses has heard me say it—we are not in the “nice-to-know” business. We need to focus on what leaders “need to know” to make better decisions.

There is a huge difference.

Nice-to-know information can be fascinating. It can be interesting. It can generate great conversation. It can also fill 47 slides remarkably quickly.

But if it doesn’t help someone understand a risk, evaluate an alternative, recognize an opportunity or make a better decision, we should question why we’re spending scarce intelligence resources pursuing it.

This distinction matters even more today because organizations are drowning in things they could know. Our job is not to satisfy every organizational curiosity. Our job is to help determine what matters.

The question is no longer simply, “Can we find the answer?”

It should also be, “Does this answer deserve our attention?”

Curiosity Is Not an Intelligence Requirement

I love curious people. You almost have to be curious to be good at this profession. But curiosity can also send intelligence teams down some spectacular rabbit holes.

One interesting fact leads to another, then another. Suddenly someone is investigating a competitor’s third-level distribution partnership in Belgium because…well, we’re not entirely sure anymore.

But it is fascinating.

Three days later, somebody has a 47-slide deck.

I exaggerate. Slightly.

The discipline of great intelligence isn’t just knowing where to look. It is knowing when to stop looking. And that becomes much easier when the work begins with a decision rather than a topic.

“Tell me everything about Competitor X” is a topic. “Help us determine whether we should respond to Competitor X’s move” is a decision.

Those produce very different work.

Sometimes the Executive Is Asking Exactly the Right Question

There is another side to this. Challenging the initial request does not mean intelligence professionals should become the irritating person in every meeting who responds to everything with, “But what are we really trying to solve?”

Eventually, people stop inviting that person to meetings.

Sometimes the question is perfectly good. Sometimes leadership knows exactly what it needs. Sometimes speed matters more than philosophical exploration.

Judgment means knowing the difference.

The objective isn’t to challenge every question. It is to make sure the intelligence effort is connected to the decision it is supposed to improve.

That requires something beyond research skill. It requires business understanding, confidence and relationships. Occasionally, it also requires the courage to tell a senior executive:

“We can absolutely answer that. But based on the decision you’re facing, I think there may be another question that matters even more.”

That is a very different value proposition for our profession.

From Intelligence Provider to Decision Partner

For decades, many intelligence functions have fought for a “seat at the table.” I’ve never particularly loved that expression.

Getting into the room isn’t the objective. Being valuable once you’re in the room is.

And value isn’t created by demonstrating how much we know. It’s created by helping someone make a better decision.

Sometimes that means finding information nobody else could find. Sometimes it means connecting dots others haven’t connected. Sometimes it means seeing a risk everyone else has missed.

And sometimes it means looking at the question everyone is rushing to answer and saying:

“Wait. What decision are we actually trying to make?”

That may be one of the most valuable contributions an intelligence professional can make.

Three Things to Try

1. Start With the Decision, Not the Deliverable

Before accepting a major intelligence request, finish this sentence:

“Leadership will use this intelligence to decide whether to ______.”

If nobody can fill in the blank, don’t immediately launch the research. Spend a little more time understanding why the question is being asked—even if you’ve already been handed what appears to be a perfectly defined scope.

The difference between “We need a competitor profile” and “We need to determine whether to change our go-to-market strategy because of this competitor” is enormous.

One produces information. The other enables a decision.

2. Ask: “What Would We Do Differently?”

This is one of the simplest filters I know. If Answer A leads to one action and Answer B leads to another, you’ve probably identified a meaningful intelligence requirement.

If every possible answer produces exactly the same action, ask whether the research is actually necessary.

Not everything worth knowing is worth knowing right now.

3. Give Yourself Permission to Reframe the Assignment

Don’t become an order taker. If you believe the initial request isn’t addressing what leadership really needs to understand, respectfully reframe it.

Not: “That’s the wrong question.”

Try: “We can answer that. But based on the decision you’re facing, I think there are two other questions that may matter even more.”

That’s not resistance. That’s advisory.

And it is one of the ways our profession earns trust.

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

After more than three decades doing this work, I’ve become less impressed by how much information we can collect. I am far more interested in whether we understand why we are collecting it.

Because there will always be another competitor to investigate, another market to size, another customer to interview, another benchmark to build, another trend to analyze—and another 47-slide deck waiting patiently to be born.

But intelligence isn’t valuable simply because it’s accurate. And it isn’t valuable simply because someone asked for it.

Its value is determined by what it helps someone understand, decide or do.

So the next time someone walks into your office—or sends the inevitable email marked “URGENT”—and asks, “Can you find out…?”, resist the temptation to immediately say yes.

And perhaps be even more careful when the request arrives with a beautifully defined scope, methodology and deliverable already attached.

Ask one more question first:

“What decision are we trying to make?”

Because our job isn’t to answer every question leadership asks.

Our job is to make sure we’re answering the questions that will help them make better decisions.