Leave room for the question

A fictional opinion article about public talks. Original practice text.

The speaker finishes exactly on time. The chair thanks everyone. The audience applauds, collects its coats and carries its questions home. An efficient evening, perhaps. But have we mistaken a well-managed ending for a complete conversation?

Public talks should leave room for questions that were not submitted before anybody heard the talk. A prepared question can be useful, but it cannot respond to an example the speaker has just chosen or a claim that only becomes puzzling when it is explained. Curiosity does not always arrive a week before the event with the correct form attached.

We are not asking for the loudest person to inherit the microphone. A chair can limit the length of questions, invite a written card from someone who does not want to speak, and interrupt a speech disguised as a question. Those are reasons to chair the discussion carefully, not to remove it.

Nor must a speaker produce an instant answer to everything. “I do not know” can be an honest and useful response. It shows where the evidence stops and where another enquiry might begin. An audience can learn something from a boundary as well as from a conclusion.

Reserve fifteen minutes. Explain how to contribute. Let the first hand belong to someone who has not spoken already. A public talk should not promise that every question will be answered. It should make clear that listening is allowed to lead somewhere.

How does the writer persuade event organisers to allow unscripted questions at public talks? Support your response with evidence from the text.