Why is it so easy to have an open and honest discussion with some people and so hard with others? I think it is a matter of questions. Whether or not people are comfortable answering them and able to ask them will either make or break a conversation. I was not always able to answer questions. One of my mentors in grad school once asked me what I wanted, and I was stuck, I could not come up with anything. I realized that questions made me extremely uncomfortable so I started a project called Answering Questions Directly. I borrowed a microphone and recorder, sat with some friends and had them ask me as many questions as they could think of. They asked me everything, from questions about growing up, to what I liked, to "If you were a cloud that looked like something what shape would you be?". The project was going to have an installation component where I would sit behind a video camera in a gallery with the video being shown live on a tv that is behind a movable wall and then people could also watch me answering questions indirectly through the tv, even as I answered them directly. Even though it never took this form, it was a good experience and it did make me more capable of answering questions. 

I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes people find this amusing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes they enjoy it. It is important. I also ask a lot of questions of myself. It is how I get to know myself and others. And it is how I open myself to others. I don't know that there is a necessary order to questioning the self and answering other's questions. I think that friends and the people we are most close to in the world often help us find our answers (or our new questions) in conversation and discussion, but trying to have a conversation with someone that you don't know all that well is much more difficult if they do not know their answers or at least what questions they have about their answers.