Is it a question?

The fist step in addressing questions is to identify what was really being asked.

Remember, that a question begins with Who, What, When, Where, Why or How and ends in a question mark. If you don’t find this structure, then you received a comment. In that case you can thank the audience member and if you want to continue the discussion, ask them if they have a question. Questions that are asked in the form of a comment leave it up to the person being asked to interpret what that actual question is, which is unfair and can lead to confusion.

Aside from not actually receiving a question, you may receive many questions at once. In this case, you’ll have to make sense out of the audience member’s confusion on the fly. If there is not common thread to the questions, try to pick one major point to focus on and ask the audience member to discuss the rest with you afterwards. If you’ve been asked a series of minor points try to handle each question in turn, or paraphrase all the questions into an umbrella question and focus on that.