What are smarter questions?

What type of questions are smarter questions?
The search led me to a great article from Harvard Business Review (paraphrased below - link in the comments)

The Framework:
1) The Unasked Questions.
2) What’s Known?
3) What If?
4) Now What?
5) So, What…?
6) What’s Unsaid?

The Great Unasked Questions
What don't we know? The questions that get leaders and teams into trouble are often the ones they fail to ask. They may run counter to you and your team’s habits, preoccupations, and patterns of interaction.

Investigative: What’s Known?
When they are facing a problem or an opportunity, effective decision-makers start by clarifying their purpose—asking themselves what they want to achieve and what they need to learn. The process can be fueled by using successive “Why?” questions, as in the “five whys” (get beyond the obvious symptoms to discover the root cause). The most common mistake is failing to go deep enough.

Speculative: What If?
Investigative questions help you identify and analyze a problem in depth, Speculative questions help you consider the problem more broadly. It systematically uses the prompt “How might we…?” to overcome assumptions and jump-start creative problem-solving.

Productive: Now What?
Productive questions help you assess the availability of talent, capabilities, time, and other resources. They influence the speed of decision-making, the introduction of initiatives, and the pace of growth. Rigorously questioning and rethinking the various hows of executing on strategy:
❓ “How can we get it done?”
❓ “How will we synchronize our actions?”
❓ “How will we measure progress?” and so on.
Such questions can help you identify key metrics and milestones—along with possible bottlenecks—to align your people and projects and keep your plans on track."

Interpretive: So, What…?
Interpretive questions—sensemaking questions—enable synthesis. They push you to continually redefine the core issue—to go beneath the surface and ask, “What is this problem really about?” Natural follow-ups to investigative, speculative, and productive questions, interpretive questions draw out the implications of an observation or an idea.

Subjective: What’s Unsaid?
The final category of questions differs from all the others. Whereas they deal with the substance of a challenge, it deals with the personal reservations, frustrations, tensions, and hidden agendas that can push decision-making off course “When we fail, it’s often because we haven’t considered the emotional part.”.

Customize to your own unique style and skillset and balance is key. After establishing which types of questions you are most and least comfortable asking, you can create a better balance for yourself & situation. Start by reminding yourself of the categories above before your next big meeting.