CANNOT — "How do you compare to your competitors?" (abstract → max overplacement)
Summary
Anti-pattern: "On a scale of 1-10, how do you compare to your competitors?" / "Are you ahead of or behind your competitors digitally?"
Why it fails: Triggers overplacement + reference-group neglect (Camerer & Lovallo 1999 — excess entry driven by overconfidence about RELATIVE skill, Cain, Moore & Haran 2015 — OVERPLACEMENT (not absolute confidence) drives entry; easy markets pull entrants in); the better-than-average effect is at its STRONGEST when the comparison target is abstract (Svenson 1981 — 93% of US drivers rated themselves above the median for skill).
Replacement (CAN-answer version): "Pick your single biggest competitor. Open their Google Business Profile. Do they have more reviews than you, about the same, or fewer?" — concrete, named target shrinks the bias (The concrete-target moderation — the design lever against overplacement, R3 — Where comparison is unavoidable, use a concrete NAMED competitor target).