Question About Quotation Use and Subject Agreement

Hi all, I am writing a promotion and nobody can seem to agree on the correct way to write this sentence, and reading grammar rules only confused me more! I would appreciate some input on these sentences:

First draft, the sentence went like this:

"The question you must ask yourself is 'are you ready for the new company?' If the answer is 'yes!', then (...)"

While proof-reading something about that rubbed me the wrong way, so I took a stab at it:

"There's one question you must ask yourself: Are you ready for the new company? If the answer is 'yes!', then (...)"

I sent this to my friend so I didn't look silly correcting something the wrong way, and then he told I was wrong, and to keep the quotations but change it like,

"The question you must ask yourself is 'am I ready for the new company?' If the answer is 'yes', then (...)"

I like my friend's correction the best and that's probably what I'll send in as a correction, but we got into a bit of a fight - was it correct to use quotations in the first draft? I felt like it was a bit confusing to ask someone to ask themselves something in the second person, instead of saying "Ask yourself this" - or am I the wrong one?

Thanks in advance!