I was brought in to a flailing project to help get it back on track. They were four months in to designing and building a new e-commerce website for a global fashion brand. There was already lots of confusion and then deadly silence when I asked whether this was a Flash or HTML build. Puzzled faces ensued. Turns out nobody had asked.

I cannot begin to count the amount of meetings I have sat in where people rattle off jargon and acronyms to a room full of nodding heads. Those same heads then turn to one another when I ask what each acronym means. 95% of the time they don’t know, ‘It’s just a term we use’; with their blinkers on it appears.

Jargon and acronyms and the unnecessary smothering of language with contextual flagellation (see what I did there?) is the root cause of most issues. I always tell (new) clients that I will ask the seemingly stupid questions, because they are often the most important. I also warmly recommend they ask anything at anytime, no matter how stupid they think it might because there’s no such thing as a stupid question.