Sometimes, Skip the Question

I am quite comfortable asking questions in public, and usually they seem to land pretty well. I know that mostly because people often come up afterward to tell me they appreciated the question or were wondering the same thing.Recently, I had the opposite experience. It was unusual enough that I found myself thinking about what I could have done differently, and it reminded me of two things about asking questions in public.The first is simple: read the room. Sometimes it’s better to just skip the question. In this case, after being selected, I naively forgot that was an option!I was at an event where the person who asked a question before me managed to irritate pretty much everyone. He was ostensibly asking a question, but was also promoting his services, telling a sophisticated audience things they already knew, and questioning the honesty of people on the panel. Not surprisingly, the response from the panel was hostile.Then I was next.In retrospect, I should have just passed.It…