Asking open questions is a very good communication tactic in any country. In "yes" countries like India, Japan, China it's necessary. In other countries you oft

Asking open questions is a very good communication tactic in any country. In "yes" countries like India, Japan, China it's necessary. In other countries you often find out about whether your communication partner actually understood your question. Don't ask "Did you finish task X". Ask "what did you do on task X?". What you see as finished and what the other person sees as finished might be separate things. Maybe you see 100% unit tested, reviewed and documented as finished, and the other person means feature complete, but untested, undocumented, not reviewed. Open questions allow you to see what the other person understands. In some cases they might misunderstand your question entirely.