We present a natural standard translation of inquisitive modal logic $\mathrm{InqML}$ into first-order logic over the natural two-sorted relational representations of the intended models, which captures the built-in higher-order features of $\mathrm{InqML}$. This translation is based on a graded notion of flatness that ties the inherent second-order, team-semantic features of $\mathrm{InqML}$ over information states to subsets or tuples of bounded size. A natural notion of pseudo-models, which relaxes the non-elementary constraints on the intended models, gives rise to an elementary, purely (...) model-theoretic proof of the compactness property for $\mathrm{InqML}$. Moreover, we prove a Hennessy-Milner theorem for $\mathrm{InqML}$, which crucially uses $\omega $ -saturated pseudo-models and the new standard translation. As corollaries we also obtain van Benthem style characterisation theorems. (shrink)