How can we develop our critical thinking abilities? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

When it comes to making decisions or arriving at a judgment, the critical thinker strives to do so based on solid evidence, while trying to remain objective and fair-minded. It takes some effort to engage in open-minded critical thinking instead of just assuming and accepting. But the good news is that mastering some of the basic steps of critical thinking is not hard. It’s really just a matter of asking a few fundamental questions—though you must know which questions are most useful in a given situation, and be willing to take the time and trouble to ask them.

What are those questions? You’ll find different “critical thinking questions” on different lists, but here are my “favorite 5.” Start with is the ‘evidence’ question—used to try to determine the substance behind any new information you’re encountering. A critical thinker presented with any sort of claim—whether it’s coming from a product salesman, a politician, or a news story—habitually asks, What is the evidence behind this claim and how strong is it? That may lead to a subset of more specific evidence questions such as, Does this evidence come from a solid source? Is there an agenda behind it?

Answering these questions may require some digging to find out if, for example, the source of information has a strong track record for telling the truth, or whether that source may have a special interest in advancing this particular claim (in terms of the latter, always ask, Cui bono?—Latin for Who benefits?).

Sometimes the problem with information is not what is there, but what’s missing—whether it’s a news story with insufficient reporting or a sales pitch that leaves out important details. Thus, a critical thinker should always ask the second big question, What are they not telling me? (especially when offered potential solutions that may neglect to mention side effects, hidden costs, and potential negative consequences).

When people are trying to persuade you of something, they may use flawed reasoning that suggests you should believe A because of B; or they may promise that if you do A, then B will surely result. Critical thinking questions are designed to root out “logical fallacies” that may be based on faulty assumptions or, worse still, may be tricks designed to lead you to a false conclusion. So always ask, Does it logically follow?

Since one of the keys to critical thinking is fairmindedness—which requires a willingness to consider multiple perspectives—critical thinkers are trained to ask What’s the other side of this issue? The idea is to get in the habit of always considering an opposing view of the issue or claim at hand. (If you don’t do this, you end up engaging in “weak sense critical thinking”—which uses the tools of critical thinking to defend one point of view; you see this a lot with the cable news pundits).

If there is another side (sometimes there isn’t), consider both sides together and ask, Which of the conflicting views has more evidence behind it? In the end, one still may be left with a judgment call—as in, “I have three strong reasons to believe one side and one reason to believe the other; I’ll go with the stronger case.”

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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