It isn't a silly question, just a more complicated one than you probably thought. Since UltraGrid supports sorting on multiple columns, it exposes a collection (off UltraGridBand) named SortedColumns. This contains zero or more UltraGridColumn objects, depending of course on how many columns the grid is sorted on. UltraGridColumn exposes a SortIndicator property, which will return either Ascending or Descending depending on the sort order.