Our political process is a mess. I don’t think we’ve been this divided since the Civil War. Compromise has become a dirty word. Many are unwilling to read or listen to opinions unlike their own. Healthy debate seems a thing of the past. And it’s all because politicians, the parties, and people in general have staked their identities to alternatives, not to objectives.

Let me explain what I mean. Alternatives are choices. Options. Routes to a destination. Means of achieving an end. Here are some examples:

• No new taxes
• Tax the rich
• Defund Planned Parenthood
• Medicare for all
• Small government
• Big government
• My right to arm myself as I desire is sacrosanct

You all know people wedded to these alternatives. As a matter of fact, these have all become objectives in the minds of many. But they aren’t objectives. They are all alternatives.

Take taxes, for example. Taxes are one means of raising money for a good cause. Medicare is one means of providing healthcare. Defunding Planned Parenthood is one means of doing something, though I’m not sure any two people would agree on what that something is. All of these are just alternatives. All have their pros and cons. But only in relation to the objectives.  It makes no sense to stake your identity to an alternative without agreement on what you hope to accomplish.

You can argue about alternatives until you are blue, or red, in the face, and you will accomplish nothing. People will never agree on alternatives before they agree on objectives.

How does it help to argue about big vs. small government if you can’t agree on what that government needs to do? What hope is there for agreeing on taxes if you haven’t agreed on the use of those taxes? And, once you agree on your objectives, why wouldn’t you want taxes to be in the mix of options to consider?

We need to shift the conversation to objectives. Only after agreeing on what we are trying to accomplish can we expect a rational conversation about the many different ways to get there:

• Do we want economic opportunity for all who are willing to work for it?
• If people in our community are suffering, do we have an obligation to help?
• When should medical providers turn people away who can’t pay?
• When we look around at the state of our country, what makes us proud and what makes us ashamed?
• Does income disparity reduce safety and hurt the economy?

This distinction between objectives and alternatives is critical to healthy debate and innovative ideas.  This is true in business as well as politics. The effectiveness of your decision making is at stake. Your ability to extract the best ideas and performance from your employees is at stake. The quality of your culture is at stake.

To combat this tendency to argue about alternatives before agreeing on objectives, replace the following questions and statements with questions that elicit the underlying objectives.

“Should we do X or Y?”     —>  ”What are we trying to accomplish?”

“What are our options?”    —> “How would we know a good option if we saw one?”

“I think we should do X.”   —> “What criteria should govern this decision?”

Every debate, political, business, or personal, will benefit from a clear distinction between alternatives and the decision criteria governing that decision.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on October 24th, 2015.