The 4 Questions

Hearing is one of our primary senses. Yet society generally regards it as an “optional extra”, allowing it to fade away unchecked until it has negatively impacted on a person’s quality of life, relationships, personal effectiveness and access to opportunities. It is often not until many years later that hearing care eventually “steps in” to pick up the pieces, only to find itself facing resistance from negative attitudes and an individual’s desire to avoid the very intervention that will mitigate their acknowledged difficulties.

It is a quandary the hearing care profession and hearing technology industry have struggled with for decades without great success. Why? Because we have been trying to address the symptoms, rather than the underlying cause: a defective social norm.

The 4 Questions: A Framework for Creating a New Social Norm for Hearing establishes a change in direction for hearing care by identifying the four key questions a person has to answer before hearing technology becomes relevant to them, then providing a framework for ensuring society has what it needs to answer those questions in a way that fosters an approach response to hearing care.

Applying these principles at an individual level will make your own messages more effective, your response more certain and will reduce the amount of counselling and time required before someone says yes to using hearing technology.

Applying them systematically as an industry and profession will forever change the way society sees their hearing.