Discovery in Practice
I.
A Closed Question That Missed the Real Answer
Scenario
- A.An OFA asked a ward clerk, "Is the current sign-up process working okay?"
- B.The clerk said "yes," and the OFA moved on.
- C.A colleague later asked the same clerk, "Walk me through what happens from when someone signs up to when you have a final list."
The colleague discovered the clerk was manually re-entering every sign-up into a second spreadsheet because the original tool did not sort entries the way she needed - a real, ongoing burden the closed question never surfaced.
OFA Interpretation Questions
- D.Why might a closed question receive a technically true but unhelpful answer?
- E.What made the open, process-focused question more likely to surface the hidden workaround?
Stewardship Application
- F.A stakeholder answering "is it working okay" is often really answering "am I coping with it," not "is this process actually efficient."
- G.An OFA who only asks closed questions risks documenting that everything is fine when a real, fixable burden is sitting just below the surface.
II.
Applied Practice and Evaluation
A.
Applying What Was Learned
- 1.Scenario Context
- a.The learner participates in or reviews a recorded conversation that drifts off-topic partway through.
- 2.Required OFA Reasoning
- a.Identify the point where the conversation drifted, and, in the notes produced from the conversation, correctly separate what was actually decided from what was merely discussed during the drift.
- 3.Required Output
- a.A written meeting summary that captures the decisions made despite the drift, plus a brief personal reflection noting where the drift occurred and what a facilitator might have said to redirect it.
B.
Performance Indicators
- 1.Strong Performance Indicators
- a.The drift point is correctly identified in the reflection.
- b.The summary itself is unaffected by the drift - decisions and open items are still clearly and accurately captured.
- c.The reflection notes what a facilitator's redirect might have looked like, even though the learner was not the one facilitating.
- 2.Weak Performance Indicators
- a.The drift point is missed or misidentified.
- b.The summary blends the off-topic discussion in with genuine decisions.
III.
Business Case Applications
A.
Case 1 — Data Migration
- 1.Scenario
- a.A ward clerk says the legacy activity spreadsheets are "basically fine" when asked about data quality ahead of migration.
- 2.Task
- a.Prepare open questions that would surface hidden issues a closed yes/no question would miss (for example, "Walk me through how you decided what to enter when an activity had no clear category").
- b.Note what the answer reveals.
- 3.Deliverable
- a.A short set of prepared questions and the resulting findings.
- 4.Evaluation Notes
- a.The questions are open-ended and specific to the migration risk, not generic conversation-starters.
B.
Case 2 — System Integration
- 1.Scenario
- a.A call between the scheduling tool team and the calendar team starts discussing an unrelated past incident partway through, eating into the time meant to decide on the conflict-detection approach.
- 2.Task
- a.Identify the drift point.
- b.Draft a specific statement that would redirect the conversation back to the decision that needs to be made.
- 3.Deliverable
- a.A written reflection with the drift point and the redirect statement.
- 4.Evaluation Notes
- a.The redirect is specific enough to actually work in the moment, not a generic "let's stay focused."
C.
Case 3 — Deep Linking
- 1.Scenario
- a.A stakeholder describes, somewhat vaguely, what should happen when a member taps a temple appointment reminder notification.
- 2.Task
- a.Restate what was heard in the learner's own words.
- b.Confirm it with the stakeholder before documenting anything as final.
- 3.Deliverable
- a.A note showing the restatement and the stakeholder's confirmation or correction.
- 4.Watch For
- a.The restatement happens before documentation is finalized, not after a misunderstanding has already been built upon.