Vague, general, and open questions will lead to responses in kind - and you will probably hear a lot of wonderful praise. If however, you ask about specific, direct, and potentially revealing points that are important to you, then you will be more likely to get helpful answers.

Be sure to ask open questions. Yes/no questions will not get you as much information. You want the person at the other end of the line to give narrative feelings and thoughts that will include additional useful information.

On the other hand, if your questions are too specific, then people will feel that you are interrogating them beyond that which is expected in good taste. Furthermore, if you receive too many specific facts at once, then you may have difficulty absorbing all of the information in an understandable manner.

We thus have a trade-off. General questions will give only glib, positive information. Specific questions reveal true answers, but they don't give the full picture. It is therefore necessary to make a compromise.

"Warm up" your contact by asking general questions. You might say, "I have to help somebody decide whether to go out with this person. Everything I have been told so far sounds very general, and this person seems to be very much the same as everybody else. What can you say to help me advise my friend about whether to go out with this person?"

After both of you are relaxed and comfortable, you can gradually move to your pointed questions or to unanswered issues from previous phone calls.

Don't you want to hear positive things about your potential date? Wouldn’t you like to know that you are about to date a fine person? Why try to persuade the contact to say negative things?

That question can be answered when you realize that positive issues will be stressed without encouragement. It is only natural to say good things about a close friend or relative. You can only receive a full and balanced picture by encouraging people to give equal time to issues that are not revealed naturally.