EN
DE
NL
I’m a lateral thinker and I love to be creative and playing around with different methodoligies and frameworks. Since I started to work with AI, I wanted to find out, if my aleady exsisiting expertise could be combined with all the options AI offers.
Prompt Engineering is one of the tasks which can be challenging but also a exciting task, when exporiting topics abou change, workshops and other goals. And somtimes I like to tell one of my AI assistants, to take over by asking me questions, instead of me being the facilitator. This patter is called Flipped Interaction. I have written a post about it. You can read about this here.
Than an idea came up top my mind, and I started thinking about how Clean Language can be used when practising flipped interaction prompting.
What Clean Language is
Clean approaches encourage people to express themselves with maximum freedom – minimally constrained or contaminated by a facilitator’s concepts and assumptions about the way people or the world works.
Clean Language is what the facilitator does with their words, their voice and their body. You can capture Clean Language on video. It’s the behaviour required to facilitate a clean application. It is ‘content-free’ and ‘non-leading’ in that it does not presuppose a client’s subjective experience has any particular characteristics other than a few universal ways people use time and space to organise their experiences.
Source: https://cleanlanguage.com/introducing-clean-language/
Here my thoughts structured, including use cases:
We all talk to AI, right? We ask, it answers. But what if we flipped that dynamic? What if the AI asked us questions to guide us to deeper insights? That’s the core of Clean Prompting—a concept I recently developed in a fascinating conversation with an AI, aiming to fundamentally change how we interact with artificial intelligence.
What is Clean Prompting? The Role Reversal with a System
Forget the old “I command, AI obeys.” Clean Prompting is “Flipped Prompting” infused with the principles of Clean Language. Instead of telling the AI what to deliver, we empower it to shift perspective, ask us questions, uncover blind spots, and ultimately help us learn more deeply.
It’s a conscious role reversal: From “Commanding AI User” to “Deep Dive Dialogue Leader.”
Why Now? More Depth, Less Bias
Prompt engineering often feels like just operating a tool. Clean Prompting transforms it into a method for reflection, exploration, and genuine innovation.
No Suggestion, Open Thinking Space: In traditional prompting, we might ask: “Give me 5 ways to use AI in my business.” With Clean Prompting, we ask the AI to pose the questions we might not even know to ask ourselves.
Example: “If AI in your company had a voice—what would it say about its current usefulness? What questions would help me realize that?”
- Less Bias, More Clarity: AIs amplify our thinking. Clean Prompting helps avoid our own biases and narrow thought patterns by having the AI guide us through targeted, non-suggestive questions toward fresh perspectives.
- AI as Coach & Sparring Partner: Imagine your AI not just as a utility, but as a systemic coach that helps you organize your thoughts and approach problems from entirely new angles.
The Simple Path to Clean Prompting: How to Get Started!
You don’t need to be a Clean Language expert. My goal was to make Clean Prompting “Keep It Stupid Simple.” Here’s how to initiate this transformative dialogue:
Step 1: Initialize Your AI
Start your chat by giving your AI these instructions to set it into Clean Prompting mode:
In this chat, we will use a special interviewing and prompting method based on the principles of **Clean Language** and **Flipped Prompting**.
This means:
My role is to give you context and a topic. Your role is to ask me **targeted, non-suggestive questions** to encourage me to think more deeply about my topic, provide all necessary information, and uncover hidden assumptions.
You will lead the dialogue through your questions, similar to a coach or a systemic consultant. Ask me questions that help me examine my situation from different angles and discover new ideas or solutions.
Understood? Please confirm briefly with “Understood.” and wait for my next input.
Step 2: Your Topic, Your Goal – Let the AI Ask!
Once the AI confirms with “Understood.,” provide your context:
My Topic / Context: Briefly and precisely describe what it’s about (e.g., a project, a problem, an idea, a challenge).
My Desired Outcome (optional): What do you want to achieve by the end of the session?
Conclude this prompt with: Based on the topic and desired outcome described above: Please ask me your first question now.
A Practical Example (for Scrum Masters / Agile Coaches):
Instead of asking: “How do I improve team performance?”
Clean Prompting Dialogue Start:
(You send Step 1)
(AI responds “Understood.”)
(You send Step 2 with the following content):My Topic / Context: “I want to improve communication within my agile team to reduce alignment issues between developers and stakeholders.”
My Desired Outcome: “By the end, I want 3-5 concrete, immediately actionable measures and a deeper understanding of the root causes of our current communication problems.”
Based on the topic and desired outcome described above: Please ask me your first question now.
What happens next: The AI will now ask you a targeted, non-suggestive question, such as: “If the ‘communication’ in your team had a physical form, what kind of form would it be, and where exactly does it feel ‘reduced’?”
You respond, the AI asks the next question—and so you collectively delve deeper into the topic than would ever be possible with conventional prompting.
Your Next Step
Are you ready to elevate your AI interactions to the next level? Try out Clean Prompting and share your experiences! I’m excited to see what new insights and solutions you’ll discover.
