The Best Question to Ask at a Party

The wrong question can sour the whole mood of a gathering with family or friends. Some questions are boring or intrusive or too ambiguous; others are meant to provoke—or are asked with no real interest in an answer.

And then there are those that hit it out of the park, lighting up the place and bringing everyone in it together.

“A good question opens the whole room,” says Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. “It opens a pathway for connection...