Socrates is the main character in Plato's dialogues. His chief skill was in questioning those with whom he was debating. The technique is called elenchus.

The Socratic questioner looks for a number of typical assumptions that people make as leverage points for their questioning. Morrell (2003) has identified the following.

• Where people are using management jargon and clichés to cover up loose thinking or as euphemisms. For example using a term such as flexibility to present a problem as an opportunity.
  
• Habitual assumptions that ought to be challenged, for example that 'in modern management change is the only constant and organisations that do not change will fail'. This may be true but it is an argument that is often presented as an unthinking conditioned response.
  
• Where standard rules and procedures might lead to individual injustice because the rules do not take the particular circumstances into account.
  
• Where the general application of a person's reasons for acting in a certain way in certain circumstances would lead to nonsense.
  
• Where people are seeking to argue hypothetically and thereby are being uncertain about their actual values and beliefs.

The presence of certain things that can be looked for in Socratic questioning suggests that a tutor or lecturer could train herself or himself in the technique rather than assume it is an inherent ability that only a few people, of Socrates' ability, have.

Ideally elenchus should lead to consistent and structured conversations. The participants should clarify their starting position and terms and then explore their implications. If the explorations take them to a silly conclusion then they must return and redefine the issues.

In practice of course, as Billig (1996: 54-56) points out, debates and arguments seldom resolve any issues and instead they lead to frustration as people become bogged down in semantic disputes. Socrates' interlocutors often only agreed to his conclusions, after a round of forensic questioning, by adding a grudging 'if you like'. If you use Socratic questioning as a teaching technique do not have too rosy a view of the likely outcome. The true purpose of the exercise is probably not to resolve an ethical issue but to encourage and develop students' skill at arguing.

References
Billig, M. (1996) 2nd. Edition, Arguing and Thinking. A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morrell, K. (2003) 'Socratic Dialogue as a Tool for Teaching Business Ethics' Paper presented at the Teaching Business Ethics: Business Ethics in the Curriculum, EBEN-UK and the Institute of Business Ethics, London, 6th. November

Case studies
Questionnaire and inventories
Debates and seminars