[Zope] how to get info about an object (dir/type)

hi, while working with zope, i many times have the following problem: i find a method that i can use, and the documentation (for example) says: "returns the current user". ok, but what kind of object is it? what methods does it have? usually i would simply call dir() or type() on the result object, but those are forbidden in zope. how do you usually solve this? gabor