It is simple and intuitive but surprising how often we don’t adhere to the simple imperative.   Answers start with the question.  Determining the question can in itself be a significant task.

Those seeking post-graduate designations at institutions of higher learning are quite familiar with this concept.  Selecting a research topic (i.e., the question) is the first step to conducting research.

Value-Based

Seeking a worthwhile question is a great way to get answers.  Just raising a question for the sake of the question itself can waste time and effort and ultimately has little value.

Quora (quora.com) is a forum for raising questions of any type or category and drawing on the memberships collective knowledge for answers.  Quora has an interesting model to encourage participation.

By invitation only, selected members are asked to become Quora partners and get paid for asking questions.  (Full disclosure, I am a Quora partner so am fully familiar with this process.)

Question is King

Quora recognizes their answer forum is of little value without an ongoing stream worthwhile questions (Unless of course, you are playing Jeopardy which is all about answers).

Post-secondary educational institutes which focus on research recognize the same.  Without questions to answer, there is no research to do and doctoral programs are largely unnecessary.

Caution

One of the things I observe with the Quora forum is the compensation model can and does lead to some frivolous, low-value questions.  I wonder why they are being asked.

Often these valueless questions accumulate zero answers as respondents do not want to waste there time. Compensation is based on answers and reviews so it does act as a mitigating factor though, no point in asking a question that earns no cash.