INSIGHT ‘‘ U


If you are the colleague who is fielding “quick questions”, you may think you are being useful to your organisation, but in fact you will gradually become a risk to it.


Hélène Russell is a KM consultant at TheKnowledgeBusiness and Chair of the K&IM SIG.


NLIKE most former colleagues, I didn’t return from my summer holiday to a pile of “quick ques- tion, sorry to bug you”


messages. A big contrast to my days as a Knowledge Lawyer, when my inbox was reliably filled with “Which precedent do we use for…?”, “Who’s a great expert for…?”, “Who’s good at…? (and will talk me through this tricky matter).”


It was an endless source of frustration, because there was a database, a template library, online resources, and no real reason to ask me personally.


The data you’re being handed At the time I used to sigh and think, “It’s in the database! Why does no one look?”, but these days I realise that the fact someone interrupted a colleague rather than open the database is useful data, and probably more honest data than anything in a survey on KM tools.


If you are the colleague who is fielding “quick questions”, you may think you are being useful to your organisation, but in fact you will gradually become a risk to it. Your knowledge will remain hard to find because there’s always a workaround for everyone, and when it’s time for you to leave, the questions won’t stop, they will just get answered wrong, or not at all.


Diagnose before you fix My call to you is to resist the urge to answer and move on, and instead face this data and ask yourself “What is generating


Symptom


Depends on judgement, context, or “who to ask”, not just facts.


Exists but can’t be found, buried taxono- my, dead links, unfamiliar tools.


Findable, but people don’t believe it, or don’t believe it’s current.


People don’t know the self-serve option exists or haven’t been shown how to use it.


August-September 2026


these questions?” My queries tended to fall into one of these categories, but your sector may be different.


My precedent example On the surface, my query about the precedent looked like a search or training problem. The clause was in the template library, correctly tagged, one search away. But the real reason was trust: the library held multiple versions with no indication of which was current. The fix wasn’t better search or yet more training, it was governance: one confirmed version, a visible date, a named author/validator.


A word of caution


Although these four categories are useful, they’re not watertight. Most real cases blur at least two categories. Treat the table as a helpful starting point. It is worth remembering also that not every “ask a person” instance is a KM failure to engineer away. Some of this is valuable relationship-building; some is someone wanting a named individual to own a judgement call that no database can carry accountability for. Aiming for zero “quick questions” isn’t realistic or desirable. And watch out for the training option: training is the fix most organisations reach for first, because it blames the user not the system. It’s rarely wrong to offer more training, but it’s also rarely the whole answer.


Watch who’s asking One detail to look for: does your email/ slack pile include younger colleagues?


Likely cause Tacit knowledge problem Search problem Trust problem


If those who’ve grown up self-serving everything (and actively prefer not to phone a human) are still in your query pile, that’s a louder signal than a query from someone who’s simply always done it that way. Habit can explain an experienced colleague’s reluctance to trust a database, but it doesn’t explain a digital native’s.


Try this before your next leave You don’t need to wait for the pile to build naturally. Before your next holiday, log every “quick question” you field for a fortnight, then sort each into the categories above and look for clusters. Most organisations don’t have all four problems equally. Start by fixing your dominant problem, and your inbox will thin out on its own.


The gap the audit can’t see This audit will, of course, only tell you about the people who have messaged you. It fails to capture those who didn’t: some gave up; some didn’t know who to ask; some assumed nobody would answer, or simply guessed wrong. Once you’ve sorted your fortnight of questions into the categories above, ask the fifth, unwritten one: who isn’t in that pile, and should be? I’d love to hear from you. What are your most common “quick question, sorry to bug you” issues? And are your “four categories” different to mine? I’d love to know more about KM in your sector. Message me on helenerussell@theknowledgebusiness.co.uk and join CILIP’s K&IM SIG for events where we discuss these and other practical KM problems. IP


First fix


Build people-finder tools; create space – a clinic, channel, or mentoring pairing – for this transfer.


Audit search logs for zero-result and repeated queries – your taxonomy fix list, ready-made.


Check who’s contributing. Are loud voices drowning out reliable ones? Tighten reviews. Show authors and “last verified” dates.


Training / awareness problem


Easiest to solve, but the easy assumption. Rule out the other three first.


INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 47


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56