Effective software engineering communication doesn’t merely form. It inspires.

Communication among software engineers isn’t just about exchanging information. It isn’t just about two or more people talking to each other either. It’s about empowering collaboration, driving creative solutions, and fostering continuous growth. Two powerful tools at your disposal to achieve this are Socratic questioning and intentionally vague guidance. You might have had to re-read that second one, but stay with me. I’m here to talk about enhancing your effectiveness as an engineer and communicator (not in all situations, however).

What are we talking about here?

The Socratic Method is a cooperative dialogue technique built upon asking and answering questions that encourage deep, critical thinking. Complementing this method is intentional vagueness, a technique where you provide enough guidance for direction but leave implementation details open to creative interpretation. Balancing these approaches is the bee’s knees for driving effective communication and innovation in software engineering.

Socratic questioning as an art form

Socratic questioning and its benefits

We opened the door up a little up above, but it truly helps in revealing assumptions, reasoning, and implications. In software engineering, you might have heard or even used these phrases:

• “Why did you choose this over that?”

• “What edge cases have you considered here?”

• “How does this scale with more users?”

These types of questions can deepen understanding by encouraging thorough comprehension of design decisions. They can uncover issues early by helping catch potential flaws or oversight during design rather than implementation. But this probably isn’t news to you. You’ve probably also been keen to the flipside of things.

Socratic questioning and its potential pitfalls

It can sometimes seem… confrontational. We’ve all been there before—a coworker saying something unnecessary or in a way that lacked tact. I don’t have to go into specifics, so we just want to avoid this.

To do so, we can:

• Phrase questions neutrally and supportively! Which do you think does that?

  • “Could you explain your thinking behind this choice?”

  • “Why didn’t you consider X?”

• Frame discussions as collaborative explorations rather than the dreaded interrogations.

Intentional vagueness — empowering creativity and autonomy

Understanding intentional vagueness

Intentional vagueness means providing clear objectives without prescribing explicit solutions, thereby leaving room for creativity. For example:

• "Ensure the caching mechanism efficiently handles common use cases," instead of specifying a particular caching strategy.

• "Consider optimizing for latency here," without demanding a particular algorithm or data structure.

These statements leave room for exploration, giving engineers freedom to explore unique, potentially better solutions. They can even further your trust, since you are demonstrating trust in teammates’ skills and judgment. The best thing of all is that it increases accountability and ownership, encouraging engineers to own their technical decisions and outcomes. Now, with everything, “there are tradeoffs”. It can easily backfire if misinterpreted, and in order to mitigate this, you must strike a balance with how ambiguous you are.

Harmonizing socratic questioning and intentional vagueness

When to apply each

• Socratic questioning: Best for refining existing designs, debugging, and deeply understanding rationale.

• Intentional vagueness: Used more for creative juices, keeping accountability and ownership on the other. Anytime you can say “it is not for me to answer, but for you to find out.”

Imagine reviewing a colleague’s design document:

• Begin with intentional vagueness: “Consider trade-offs between data integrity and latency.”

• Follow with targeted Socratic questions: “How will its integration affect downstream services? Have we explored going through this service instead?”

This combination gently nudges thinking without restricting creativity.

Creating a culture of thoughtful communication

• Be kind

• Foster consistent, structured communication norms within your team.

• Explicitly value and encourage thoughtful questioning and creative autonomy.

• Embrace ambiguity strategically.

Closing

Combining socratic questioning with intentional vagueness unlocks the full potential of your team’s capabilities. It’s a delicate balance, for sure, but with it, you’ll empower your team, encourage deeper thinking, and drive innovative, robust solutions. Effective software engineering communication doesn’t merely form. It inspires.