**You're looking at this all wrong.** When someone asks you whether the question you have is "quick" or "small" or what have you, what they really want you to do is tell them what it's about or how much of their time you'll need. Whatever you do, please don't respond with a simple Yes or No, that's not what they're after. What you should do is:

 - **estimate how much time** of theirs you'll need
 - **explain what your question is** and why or on what you need their input
 
You want to do both of these but in practice you'll usually only be able to answer the latter. Estimating the time required will become easier with practice. Most routine and simple questions are a matter of 5-15 minutes and you can accurately predict them as such. If you're after a knowledge transfer, getting input on a project or discussing an important issue then you're looking at more than that and you should really be sending a meeting request in most cases. But that sort of depends on the culture.

**But you should always be able to boil down your question into a single sentence or summary**. And that lets the other party estimate how long something will take and where that question fits in their priorities. 

But here's the thing: **you should always do this from the start!** There is nothing quite as pointless as an email saying "Can I ask you something?". It means I have to write back to you to ask what your question is about. This isn't grade school where you have to put up your finger to get the teacher's attention. In business communication you want to get to the point quickly and clearly. Since we're in the days of Instant Messaging, it's somewhat common for people on IM to ask "Do you have a moment?" *but even then* it's much preferred to actually say what you need someone for: "*Do you have moment for a question on collating the TPS reports?*"

Imagine the following IM exchange:

> - Hey X, do you have a moment?

> - I'm a bit swamped, what do you need?

> - I wanted to ask you about the TPS reports.

> - Can we do that later? I'm on a bit of a deadline.

> - Sure, I'll contact you tomorrow morning.

</ br>

> - Hey X, is now a good time?

> - Sure, go ahead.

> - In the TPS report for March I noticed [a thing], what should we do with that?

> - Oh, you should actually ask Y about that.

You're going back and forth six times and spending most of your time on communication overhead. **If you had asked your actual question from the start** you'd already have known to contact Y instead. If a similar conversation took place over e-mail it could take even longer. 

Business communication is (...or *should be*) all about fast and concise communication. You should strive to avoid getting a response like this in the future by improving the way you communicate. Don't "ask if you can ask", that's a level of formality most workplaces go without.

One addendum: verbal communication is a bit different in that it's common to get someone's attention with a variation on "*Can I bother you for a moment?*" or "*If I'm not interrupting, can I ask you a question?*". Ignore the fact that you're already bothering, interrupting and asking; that's just one of the quirks of polite conversation. You'll still get better results if you summarise what your question is about but here the context and who you're talking to typically determine how you best get someone's attention. As an example it's common for people who work closely together to just say "*Hey, do you have a moment?*" and then wait for the colleague to finish what he's doing before asking your actual question.