Dear Etiquetteer:
With the beginning of the academic year comes a flurry of lectures, conferences, and other gatherings that include opportunities for audience members to engage with the participants on stage. How does one properly deal with the guest who asks the interminable question that has nothing to do with the topic at hand but everything to do with said guest’s own ego?
Dear Frustrated Moderator:
Etiquetteer shares your frustration with the Off-Topic Question, the bane of the lecture circuit. Two things are worse: being contradicted by an audience member, and the question that begins “I don’t really have a question, but a comment.”
Why do people behave this way? Sometimes their minds have been opened by the speakers in such a way that they really haven’t formed their thoughts, but are so excited about their new knowledge that they have to ask something to share it. Others are starry-eyed fans of the speakers who have no other way to interact with them. These are charitable explanations.
Those you speak of just want to assert their importance, intelligence, and/or pedigree by bringing up elements of the topic that the speakers didn’t include, no matter how very tenuously they might be connected. Sometimes Windbags just want to score malicious points off the speakers. [Faculty on faculty takedowns are overrated.] Finally, there’s that audience member who must have decided “This is the question I am going to ask today” whether it has anything to do with the topic or not.
Both patience and at least the appearance of gratitude are needed to handle These People. Dear Mother used to say “When you lose your temper, you lose your point,” and she was right. As soon as the audience sees steam rising from a moderator’s collar, sympathy will begin to flow toward the Windbag. Etiquetteer freely admits that this can be a challenge.
A good Q&A question shouldn’t take more than a minute or two to ask; it’s not a time for speeches. When they still can’t get to the point, consider interrupting with “I do want to have time for other questions from the audience. What is your question?” A good response to something off topic begins by thanking the questioner and regrets that you can’t really weave it into the actual topic. “Thank you for that interesting question. I wish I could comment more, but that’s entirely outside my discipline.” Good speakers, especially good academics, are also aware of the wider world; if possible, direct your questioner to other relevant sources of information.
A certain amount of compassion is needed, though. At a panel discussion earlier this year Etiquetteer witnessed an audience member make a distressing appeal for assistance in repealing some healthcare-related issue (Memory fails on the details) that had absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand. The moderator, a True Gentleman, admitted that that wasn’t the area of expertise of the panel, “but perhaps there is someone here in the audience who can help, who could approach you after the program.” That response deftly and kindly preserved everyone’s self-respect, while giving the audience a chance to assist after the Q&A period. What could be more Perfectly Proper?
At the other end of the spectrum, about 30 years ago Etiquetteer witnessed the incomparable Lily Tomlin handle a long-winded young woman whose “question” had gone on no little time. (Ms. Tomlin was heading a panel discussion at MIT with her partner Jane Wagner.) When it was finally Ms. Tomlin’s turn, she began “I was free-associating during your question . . . ” which led to prolonged laughter and applause. It was a harsh but necessary lesson that a Q&A period is not a time to flesh out and experiment with your own ideas, but to prompt the speakers to flesh out and share their own. But Etiquetteer has more sympathy for that young woman now; that must have been very embarrassing.
Only the star power of someone like Ms. Tomlin could take down a Windbag so dismissively. The rest of us need to have more sympathy. Snappy comebacks and putdowns are wonderful comic relief on television, but they sting more in real life.
Etiquetteer wishes you brief, concise, specific, and on-topic questions at all your functions this season.