60 brainstorming questions that unstick a session
Last reviewed by The thinkdrop facilitation team
A good brainstorming question is specific, open, and answerable by everyone in the room. Use opening questions to start the board, reframing questions when ideas repeat, provocation questions when the group runs dry, and prioritisation questions to close. Rewriting the question is usually faster than pushing a stuck group harder.
Key facts
- Questions listed
- 60, grouped by purpose
- Best question length
- One sentence
- Questions per session
- One main question, 2–3 provocations
- When to reframe
- After ~10 minutes with no new angle
- Worst question type
- Anything answerable with yes or no
Step by step
- Open with a question everyone can answer — The first question sets participation. Ask something every person in the room has direct experience of — what they have seen, heard or tried — rather than something only the specialists can address.
- Reframe when ideas start repeating — Repetition is a signal about the question, not the group. Rewrite it: change the actor, the timescale, the constraint, or invert it entirely.
- Provoke when the board goes quiet — Drop in a constraint question — half the budget, ten times the users, no engineers, ship on Friday. Artificial constraints reliably produce ideas the open question did not.
- Close with a question about commitment — "Which of these would you personally start on Monday?" surfaces the difference between ideas people like and ideas people will do.
Opening questions
Use one of these as the board's main question, or as the first prompt card.
- What is the real problem behind the one we were asked to solve?
- What would we do if we had to fix this by Friday?
- What has a customer told us twice in the last month?
- What do we all quietly know is not working?
- If we started this from scratch today, what would we not rebuild?
- Who is affected by this that is not in this room?
- What is the smallest version of this we could ship?
- What did we assume when we set this up, that is no longer true?
- Where do people work around our process?
- What would make this ten times easier rather than ten percent better?
Reframing questions
Reach for these when ideas start repeating each other.
- How might we make the problem irrelevant instead of solving it?
- What would this look like if it were free?
- What if we only had one week?
- Who has already solved a version of this, in any industry?
- What would we do if this were our only product?
- What would we stop doing to make room for this?
- How would we cause this problem deliberately?
- What does the person who disagrees with us see?
- What would the simplest possible version look like?
- What if the constraint we are working around is the actual product?
Provocation questions
Constraint questions for when the board goes quiet.
- What would we do with half the budget?
- What would we do with ten times the users?
- What if no engineer were available for a month?
- What would a competitor announce tomorrow that would worry us?
- What is the laziest possible solution?
- What is the most expensive one, and what does it teach us?
- What would we try if failure had no consequences?
- What would we do if this had to work offline?
- What if we had to explain it in one sentence to a new customer?
- What if we removed the feature everyone assumes is essential?
Prioritisation questions
Use these once generation has stopped and you are choosing.
- Which of these would you personally start on Monday?
- Which one, if it worked, makes the others unnecessary?
- What is cheap to test and quick to learn from?
- Which idea are we avoiding because it is uncomfortable rather than wrong?
- What would we regret not trying by the end of the quarter?
- Which of these needs a decision rather than more work?
- What can one person finish without waiting for anyone else?
- Which idea has an obvious owner already in the room?
Question type by moment in the session
| Moment | Question type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Start | Opening | What is the real problem behind this one? |
| Ideas repeat | Reframing | What would this look like if it were free? |
| Board goes quiet | Provocation | What would we do with half the budget? |
| Choosing | Prioritisation | Which would you start on Monday? |
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good brainstorming question?
One sentence, specific, open-ended, and answerable by everyone present rather than only the experts.
How many questions should a brainstorm have?
One main question, plus two or three provocations held back for when the group slows down.
What questions should you avoid in a brainstorm?
Yes-or-no questions and questions so broad that different departments would answer entirely different things.
What do you ask when a brainstorm stalls?
A constraint question — half the budget, ten times the users, ship on Friday — which reliably produces new angles.