The One Question That Saves You From Building the Wrong Course

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The one question that changes everything about course design

Before you start building any e-learning course, there’s one question you should ask your client every single time. It’s not “How long should this be?” or “What tool are you using?” It’s “Why?” And it’s more useful than it sounds.

The Jefferson Memorial mystery

Following is a familiar problem-solving story. Probably more in line with George Washington and the cherry tree than complete truth, but it does bring out some ideas about digging into root causes and not just jumping to a solution.

The story goes:

The granite at the Jefferson Memorial kept crumbling. The maintenance crew couldn’t figure out why — none of the other memorials had the same problem.

They kept asking why. Why is the granite crumbling? It gets hosed down more than the others. Why does it get hosed down more? It has more bird droppings. Why is there more bird poop? It attracts more birds. Why are there more birds, are they not Federalists? More spiders to eat. Why are there more spiders? More flying insects for the spiders. Why are there more insects? The memorial’s lights get turned on too early, which draws them in.

The solution had nothing to do with the granite at all. They changed the lighting schedule, and the crumbling stopped. If they had stopped at the first answer and fixed the hosing problem, nothing would have changed.

Here are the five chains of events:

• Deterioration: The marble was wearing away due to frequent, harsh high-power washings.
• Droppings: Washings were required constantly to clean heavy bird droppings.
• Spiders: Large flocks of birds gathered to feed on an abundant population of spiders.
• Midges: Spiders thrived because the building swarmed with mating midge flies.
• Lighting: Midges were attracted in massive numbers because exterior floodlights turned on right at dusk.

How this applies to e-learning

Clients come to you with training requests that feel like the obvious solution. “We need a course on customer service because our complaints are up.” That sounds reasonable. Let’s teach them how to deal with complaints. But is a course the actual fix?

Ask “why” a few times and the real picture often changes. Why are complaints up? Because new reps aren’t following the escalation process. Why? Because they weren’t shown how in onboarding. Why? Because the onboarding guide is outdated. Now you’re not building a customer service course. You’re updating an onboarding document. Those are very different projects.

You’d also want to dig into the specifics more. Such as what complaints are going up? Product? Service? Etc.

The questions worth asking

You don’t need a complicated analysis framework. The classic “who, what, where, when, and why” questions still work. What matters is that you ask them before you decide training is the right solution and start building a course. Or when training is the right solution, you want to make sure you’re building the right course.

When you ask questions, you’re looking for evidence of an actual problem, not just opinions about what’s wrong. Some good ones to try:

• What specific behavior do you want to change?
• How do you know that training will change it?
• How will you measure whether it worked?
• Can you show me examples of the problem happening?
• Where do you want them to be and where are they now? Why is there a gap?

Why this makes you more valuable

Authoring tools are getting easier every year. At some point, nearly anyone will be able to produce a viable e-learning course. This is especially true now that anyone can vibe code and use AI to build some sort of “course.”

When that happens, what sets you apart?

It’s not your ability to build. It’s your ability to figure out what to build. Designers who ask good questions before they touch a tool tend to deliver work that actually changes something. That’s what makes them worth hiring again.

Sometimes asking “why” means telling a client that training isn’t what they need. That’s usually the most valuable thing you can say.

Key takeaways

Get in the habit of asking “why” early and often when a new project comes in. You don’t need to challenge every assumption or run a full needs analysis — just ask enough questions to confirm that a course is actually the right solution. If you find yourself agreeing to build something without knowing why it will work, that’s a good signal to slow down and ask a few more questions first.