Virtue inquiries

Sasha Pilkington shares a practice she calls “virtue inquiry” that guides her approach to end-of-life conversations. She listens for and elicits the virtues that are valued by the people with whom she’s meeting.   Virtue inquires draw on ideas and practices developed by David Epston including “getting to know the person ahead of the problem”, “researching moral character” and “wonderfulness inquiries” with children. They also build from a paper by Eve Lipchik (1988) called “Interviewing with a constructive ear” that had an influence on Sasha's early practice. Virtue inquiries take place with adults or young adults and so flow differently from “wonderfulness inquiries” (see chapter 2 in Marsten, Epston & Markham, 2016).