The strength of any consultation comes from asking the right questions. Simply embarking on a community consultation initiative doesn’t mean your organization will receive the participation and feedback outcomes you hoped for.

Challenges related to public consultation are felt by organizations from many industries including resource extraction, infrastructure development and public sector projects. Take a look at some of the important considerations to keep in mind as you develop your stakeholder consultation questionnaire.

Public consultation factors

Three major factors at play in public consultation are:

  1. Legal requirements to consult with all the groups that are potentially impacted by their projects.
  2. The need to reduce project risk, resistance and costly delays potentially caused by poorly executed or documented consultations.
  3. The need to demonstrate that the issues, interests and concerns of impacted stakeholders are taken into account in project studies.

One practice that will improve the outcomes of a consultation initiative is to take time to develop the right set of questions. Taking differing views into account, and questioning assumptions creates an evaluation process (and eventual set of findings) that will be regarded as credible by the public.

Being asked to participate in a consultation, but not believing that your input will make any difference to the outcome, is a serious hazard to a successful inquiry. If the intention is not genuine, people can sense it. Effective stakeholder engagement is more than a check box as all parties must value it.

When developing a set of questions, seek to reflect the perspectives and interests of the stakeholder groups affected by the project. It can be especially beneficial to have your stakeholder groups’ involvement in the development of the stakeholder consultation questionnaire. In addition, asking “Who else do you think we should we be talking to?” will help ensure you’ve reached everyone affected by your project.

Asking good questions, and using culturally appropriate methods and language will generate more useful feedback, and help establish stronger credibility with stakeholders and rights-holders.

Develop good questions

Three tips for developing good questions:

1. Keep language simple and direct. Provide all the details about the project, and make sure industry jargon is kept at a minimum and all terminology is clearly stated and easy to understand. Talk with people in a way that makes them comfortable and is culturally appropriate. Ask direct questions, and avoid being vague. If you don’t explain what you’re talking about, you risk stakeholders becoming frustrated or misunderstanding the intent of the inquiry.

2. Focus on one idea at a time. Asking questions about multiple ideas, issues, or topics in a single stakeholder consultation questionnaire makes them all harder to answer, potentially muddying your results. Each point should have it’s own question – this will make feedback easier to understand and also to summarize.

3. Make sure questions aren’t creating a bias towards one answer. You can influence the answers you will get if language and tone are not objective. Avoid inserting opinions into the questions, and if this is unavoidable to a certain degree then frame some of the questions in a positive way and some in a negative way to create balance.

If the tone of your survey is balanced it will help generate feedback that reflects people’s actual attitudes. Most importantly, the outcomes generated will help establish where problems lie, making it easier to develop the solutions required to help lead to a successful outcome.

Finally…asking how your stakeholder wants to continue to be consulted and the best way to reach them is important. Providing updates and ongoing outreach can make all the difference towards establishing an honest and trustworthy relationship.

Companies and governments need to “walk the talk” in order to earn a social license to operate. One of the most important ways to do this is to ask the right questions, thereby demonstrating that your organization has seriously considered all stakeholder interests, issues and concerns in your project studies.

 

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