CAPM Practice: Determine how to conduct stakeholder communication

Silence is a powerful elicitation tool. After asking 'What are your biggest challenges with the current process?', a patient BA waits. Stakeholders who feel pressure to fill silence often provide richer, more spontaneous insights than they would if the BA immediately offered prompts or moved to the next question.

**Why not A:** Active silence is a deliberate, purposeful pause after asking a question — not remaining silent for an entire meeting. Staying silent for the whole meeting would abdicate the BA's facilitation role and fail to guide the elicitation session productively. Active silence is a targeted technique used at specific moments, not a passive stance adopted throughout a session.

**Why not B:** Active silence is not a method for controlling or muting other participants. It is a self-directed technique where the BA resists the urge to fill conversational gaps. Using silence to suppress others' contributions would be counterproductive to elicitation, which depends on encouraging open stakeholder participation.

**Why not C:** Staying silent when disagreeing is conflict avoidance, not active silence. Active silence is about creating space for stakeholders to think more deeply and share additional insights after a question is posed. It has nothing to do with suppressing the BA's own opinions during disagreements — that is a separate interpersonal dynamic.