An approach is provided for determining the intent of a question and determining an appropriate audience to answer the question based on the intent of the question. The approach comprises processing and/or facilitating a processing of a query to cause, at least in part, a determination of one or more topics of the query based, at least in part, on one or more user preferences. The approach also comprises processing and/or facilitating a processing of the query to cause, at least in part, a determination of a classification of the query, The approach further comprises determining an audience comprising one or more candidate audience members for the query based, at least in part, on the classification of the query and the one or more topics of the query.