“What precisely is the problem we are trying to solve?” is an embarrassingly simple question.

But it is still, in my opinion, the most under-utilised and under-estimated line of interrogation in business. As a means of preventing wasted time, money and resource - as well as a way of inventing truly valuable customer solutions - I cannot think of a better diagnostic query.

It is still regularly a shock at how poorly even big businesses articulate their challenges. Time and again there is a lack of analysis, or an oversimplification. Sometimes there is no apparent attempt at all to get to the bottom of what might be causing some kind of symptomatic failure. But like the start of a journey, if you begin just one degree off course, by the end you can miss your destination by miles. So it is critical to be precise.

The arrival of digitisation has made matters worse, increasing rather than reducing the need to keep asking this pivotal question.More data does not equal greater clarity. Quite the reverse. Data is making us lazier, giving us permission to jump too early to conclusions. There is something about numbers that fool us into thinking they immediately reveal the “truth."

There are many examples of failed business decisions as a consequence of misunderstanding a problem. Coca Cola’s disastrous launch of New Coke in the 1980s was one such case (driven by a believe that Pepsi tasted “better”). It turned out that their tasting technique was flawed and in fact original Coke was preferred when consuming more than one sip.

In the airline business, I saw it first hand when tasked with improving the customer experience. In aviation, it is universally accepted that “on time” performance is the holy grail for customer satisfaction. All the data clearly points to this. Net Promoter Scores fall away once an aircraft is more than 30 to 45 minutes late and the only way to fix the problem is to do everything possible to keep schedule integrity, even at huge cost. At least, that is what is believed.

So asking “what is the problem we are trying to solve here?” might, in this context, sound foolish. However, when probed further, different options did emerge. As it turns out, it isn’t always the actual lateness of the aeroplane that is the problem, rather the anxiety the lateness induces. And customers remember this anxiety, even if the delay hasn’t created any genuine inconvenience or if the aircraft has actually managed to make up the time and arrive as scheduled.

Understanding this suddenly opens up a range of new solutions as well as opportunities. Looking to reassure customers at every possible touchpoint – with both technology and human interaction, turns out to be a very powerful customer experience enhancer in airlines, with or without delays.

Asking for a better understanding of the problem has been at the heart of “design thinking” for years. Teachers of this skill continually stress the need to stay longer in the diagnostic phase, until you really have exhausted all possibilities. Steve Jobs was a master of it at Apple. Because rarely does the right answer appear straightaway. Only with regular and potentially tiresome persistence can you start to get to the core of an issue.

More than ever in this Information Age, the default position on any project or business plan must be to start by asking if you are genuinely sure you understand the problem you are trying to solve. Forcing yourself to write it down as clearly and factually as you can is an excellent discipline - almost as though it has to be submitted to a scientific journal for scrutiny. Then, get others to read it and test it.

And even when you think you are clear - never tire of asking the question again and again. It is never a foolish one and rarely time wasted, and it almost never fails to throw up some unexpected results.