Oh I love this question.

It's 100% a great practice to state a question.

The reason is not for the interviewer, it's actually for you.  It's so you know what are the level 2 and level 3 areas you want to include to answer the question.  

For example, if you say, “I want to look at the market” or “I want to look at the customers."  Well, there are a million things you could look at, a million ways to segment, etc.  What you might really mean, is “I want to see if our customers overlap with those of the potential acquisition” and therefore you'll much more easily identify the next levels.

Furthermore, it's much more hypothesis driven and much more interesting for the interviewer (or the client) to be told what the questions are we want to answer than what are the subjects we should discuss.

Happy to explain more.  In the meantime, hope this helps!

Allen

Hey there,

You always need to explain your logic for coming up with certain ideas, both for McKinsey and every other consulting firm.

Why? Because interviewers are also interested in understanding your thinking process and logic, they do not just care about your content. 

That is also why for McKinsey cases there is usually no correct single answer but rather the quality of your arguments that defines your outcome.

All the best!

Cheers,

Florian

Always state the why! Otherwise it feels very dry and almost rote as to why you are looking at a bucket. Plus thinking about the why is a core skill to have when casing.

For example - I would like to look at the overall market trends to assess if it is the right fit for our growth ambitions sounds a lot better than I would like to look at market trends.

Udayan

(editiert)

100% you need the why! I like to tell my candidates that, for every bucket, they need the why, what, and how.

You absolutely need to explain why you're looking at what you're looking at. As in, how is this going to help you answer the objective?

Do you actually think “competitors” and “customers” is self explanatory? You need to say “I'd like to look at what competitors are doing so that we can do the same” or “I'd like to understand which competitors are making changes” or “I'd like to compare our product to the competitors products in order to look for gaps”, etc. etc. This is not self-explanatory at all…every bucket/word in every case has a different meaning based on the objective!

Hi!

Yes, you should always explain why, i.e. the logic you are following. It is indeed one of the key areas tested by interviewers.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Anto