200+ Best Open-Ended Questions for Amazing Conversations

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Engage in conversation rife in creative thinking with these amazing open-ended questions, and see what deep and wonderful places your answers take you.

Open-Ended Questions

Good

Draw out some meaningful answers and intriguing exchanges with whomever you’re talking to by asking some of these good open-ended questions, and see what you can find out about each other.

1. How do you see your life in 10 years’ time?

2. What do you think are your best qualities?

3. What are your worst qualities?

4. Which inventions have had the most impact on human history?

5. What does your routine look like on an average day?

6. If you have a whole weekend free, how do you spend it?

7. If you were put in charge of improving your local area, what changes would you make?

8. What’s your biggest pet peeve?

9. What achievement are you proudest of?

10. What part of the day is your favorite?

11. What’s the biggest goal you want to achieve in your life?

12. How do you look after your mental health?

13. What’s your favorite memory from your childhood?

14. What are the biggest barriers standing between you and your dreams?

15. How are you different from your parents?

16. What motivates you?

17. How do you spend your lunch at work?

18. What do you think is the most useful subject children learn at school?

19. Do you have a business idea you would love to pursue in the future?

Personal

Go beyond one-word answers and trivial responses with these personal open-ended questions, ideal for helping you and whomever you’re talking to open up about topics and issues closest to your heart.

20. How important is your career to you?

21. How extroverted are you?

22. How do you make your favorite food or dish?

23. How would you deal with a co-worker who wasn’t pulling their weight?

24. What’s your favorite TV show, and what do you like so much about it?

25. How do you go about making new friends?

26. Which famous person are you most influenced by?

27. How do you usually celebrate your birthday?

28. How do the clothes you wear reflect your personality?

29. When you were a child, what did you think your job would be?

30. What are you like as a co-worker?

31. What are you/would you be like as a manager?

32. If you could change one thing about your manager, what would you change?

33. Which one item could you not live without?

34. How would your best friend describe you?

35. What do you feel insecure about?

36. What bands or musicians from your youth do you still listen to now?

37. How is your relationship with your family?

38. How difficult do you find it to throw away items with sentimental value?

39. How often do you dream?

40. How much time on average do you spend online per day?

41. Which film changed your outlook the most?

42. Why do you like the type of music you do?

43. How could you introduce more spontaneity into your life?

44. How do you balance your personal life and your professional life?

45. How have you changed from when you were a child?

Interesting

Excited to debate and muse more meaningful answers with your friends and acquaintances? Try these interesting questions which are so intriguing that it’s almost impossible to give a one-word answer!

46. What was your worst ever travel experience?

47. If you could swap lives with anybody just for one day, who would you pick?

48. What was your best ever travel experience?

49. How have your priorities changed from when you were younger?

50. What’s the most challenging thing you’ve ever done?

51. What’s your favorite life hack?

52. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

53. What social situations do you dread the most?

54. What do you think will be the next huge scientific invention?

55. Which celebrity would you love to be stuck in an elevator with?

56. How would the world change if everybody lost the ability to lie?

57. If you could meet your hero, what would you say to them?

58. If you were stranded on a desert island, which book would you want to have with you?

59. What is something you loved to do as a child but are less keen on now?

60. What advice would you give yourself in you could go back in time 10 years?

61. What’s your guilty pleasure?

62. Do mobile phones do more harm or more good in the world?

63. If you could compete on any TV game show, which show would you participate in?

64. What social constraints do you wish you could remove?

65. How likely are you to break the rules at work?

66. How much do you think money can lead to happiness?

67. What qualities do you most admire in friends and family?

68. What subject isn’t yet taught in school but you think should be?

69. What do you think makes somebody a hero?

70. What do you wish people would talk more about?

71. What do you wish people would talk less about?

72. How do you think cars will look in the future?

73. How has your professional life impacted your personal life?

Flirty

Take a blossoming romance to the next level with these flirty open-ended questions, and see if you can learn some valuable information about each other and whether you’d be a great match, while still keeping things relatively fun and flirty.

74. What’s the best date you’ve ever been on, and what made it so great?

75. How likely are you to ask out somebody you have a crush on?

76. What qualities do you look for in a partner?

77. How much does having shared interests with a partner matter to you?

78. What do all your celebrity crushes have in common?

79. What would happen on your dream date?

80. How do you know if somebody is ‘the one’?

81. How do you know when you’re in love?

82. What physical features attract you most to your preferred gender?

83. What would your dream wedding look like?

84. What job would your dream partner have?

85. How does a partner fit into your future plans?

86. What’s the most romantic gift you’ve ever given?

87. What’s the most romantic gift you’ve ever received?

88. How do you decide if somebody is a good match for you?

89. What are your biggest turn-ons?

90. How effective do you think pick-up lines are?

91. What aspects of dating have changed most in the last 10 years?

92. How easy do you think it is to find love on a dating app?

93. What are some of your dating dealbreakers?

Funny

Asking open-ended questions can still send you and whomever you’re talking to into fits of laughter and plenty of giggles and fun story-telling, as these questions prove.

94. What’s your most controversial opinion, and what’s the reasoning behind it?

95. Which habit most annoys you in other people?

96. What has been your most embarrassing moment?

97. How easily embarrassed are you?

98. What fashion trend do you regret buying into?

99. How long would you survive in a zombie apocalypse?

100. How long would you survive on a desert island?

101. What would you be most likely to get arrested for?

102. What’s your most annoying habit?

103. How often do you tell white lies to spare somebody’s feelings?

104. Would you rather be Batman or Superman, and why?

105. If you were told that a zombie apocalypse was coming, how would you prepare?

106. What things do you do that are typically old for your age?

107. Which hobbies do you not understand the appeal of?

108. If you became invisible for one day only, what would you do?

109. What’s your favorite memory from your school days?

110. How would life change if we moved to another planet?

111. If you were one day to become famous, what do you think you’d be famous for?

Simple

Open-ended questions don’t always have to send you and the conversation into deep, abstract, and thought-provoking places. You can still have an open and enjoyable conversation without needing to become too intense or intrusive, as these simple questions show.

112. How do you usually celebrate the major holidays?

113. What are the three most useful things you own?

114. What anecdote do you always tell at parties?

115. How do you unwind after a busy day?

116. What’s your favorite animal, and why?

117. What’s something that not many people know about you?

118. How do you spend your free time?

119. What’s your biggest phobia?

120. How much did you enjoy school?

121. What fun plans do you have for the weekend?

122. What’s the first thing you notice about somebody when you first meet them?

123. What are the top five places you’ve ever visited, and why?

124. Why have you decided to live in the area you live in?

125. How do you like to spend your vacations?

126. If you had your own talk show, which celebrities would you invite to take part in the first episode?

127. Would you rather travel to the past or to the future, and why?

128. Which period of history interests you the most?

129. Why do you think humans love to travel?

130. What’s your favorite way to engage in self-care?

131. What role has your family played in your life?

132. How important is religion or spirituality to you?

133. If you could write a job description for your dream job, what would it include?

134. What one thing would you change about your country, and why?

135. What do you tend to do when you can’t get to sleep at night?

136. What is your favorite food, and why do you like it so much?

Deep and Thought-Provoking

Go to some fascinating, thought-provoking, and even mind-boggling places by having a conversation with these deep open-ended questions, which will bring about anything but simple answers!

137. How would you explain human society to an alien in five words?

138. Why have there been so many wars throughout human history?

139. How would the world change if every individual city had its own government instead of a national government?

140. How would you define happiness?

141. How much do you believe luck affects our life trajectory?

142. If you became the President today, which policies would you implement immediately?

143. When making big life decisions, do you go with your head or your heart?

144. Which life lessons have you had to learn the hard way?

145. How do you think social media has changed the world?

146. Why is it so difficult to learn from past mistakes?

147. If the internet stopped working for a week, do you think the world would change for the better or worse during that week?

148. How concerned are you about climate change and what do you think we can do about it?

149. Why is it so difficult to live in the present?

150. What behavior that is currently considered acceptable do you think will be considered toxic in the future?

151. How would the world be different if mobile phones had never been invented?

152. Why do you think the news is always so negative?

153. Where do your political beliefs come from?

154. What do you believe happens after death?

155. Why is freedom of speech important?

156. What worries you about the future?

157. Why do you think people believe conspiracy theories?

158. How could the media change to make the world a more positive place?

159. How do you make sure that you don’t end up with regrets in life?

160. How do you think somebody should raise a child to be emotionally intelligent?

161. Why do you think most politicians get into power?

162. How would society be different if humans were immortal?

Kid-Friendly

Children love answering questions that allow their minds to run wild, so use some of these kid-friendly questions to get them opening up and thinking about big issues and meaningful topics in all walks of life. Not only will it help them express their opinions, but it will also help them develop critical thinking.

163. What’s your favorite joke?

164. If a friend feels upset, how do you make them feel better?

165. What do you like about your favorite teacher?

166. What do you like about your favorite subject at school?

167. What qualities make you want to be friends with somebody?

168. What do you like most about yourself?

169. What do you want to be when you grow up?

170. What’s the plot of your favorite book?

171. What’s your favorite part of the day?

172. What’s your favorite sport and why do you like it?

173. What magic power do you wish you had, and why?

174. What do you like the most about school?

175. What are you grateful for?

176. What’s your favorite hobby, and why?

177. How do you solve difficult problems at school?

178. What are you excited to do as an adult that you can’t do yet?

179. If you could create a brand new ice cream flavor, what flavor would you invent?

180. If you could choose one food you never have to eat again, what would you choose?

181. If you could become another animal just for one day, which animal would you choose and why?