October 2018

TRAINING

Survey and Expert Interview

Conducting an Interview
Training 1 – recap slides

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Conducting an Interview

1. Thank the expert for his or her time

2. Introduce yourself and your project

3. Before you start, frame the question and remind the interviewee of your scope

4. Provide a roadmap of the categories of questions

5. Review your interviewees experience and areas of expertise

6. Then, proceed through your questions in a systematic way

7. Start with open ended questions and then get more specific

8. If the interviewee hesitates to provide an educated guess, assist by providing a range

9. Make sure to test your hypotheses

10. Ask to confirm answer by email or to follow up with a second interview if possibe

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Dos and Dont

Dos Don’ts

• Plan in advance the key questions you want • Jump into questions without providing context
answered
• Use the same interview guide without updating it
• Before you start, frame the question and
remind the interviewee of your scope
• Assume your intreviewee means what you think
he or she means– confirm the insights
• Take down key information and confirm it
with interviewee
• Divulge any confidential information about the
• Obtain gold nuggets that can push forward client
your understanding of the material

• Ask for additional expert references

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5 Whys analysis is a powerful tool to use in your interviews to
probe further into important issues
What it is
• Root Cause: 5 Whys is a
methodology of arriving at root cause
of an issue
• Deeper Explanation: Each « Why »
attempts to get to a deeper level
cause in order to fully unearth the
driver of a given issue
• Not Necessarily 5: 5 Whys does not
necessarily involve 5; it can be 3 or 4,
the point is to get to the root cause
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How to use it
• Explore a topic fully: Use the 5 Whys
method to probe further; to make sure
you fully understand the issue
• Understand Drivers: For example; you
hear in an interview that the company
has not been profitable. You will want to
conduct root cause analysis to
understand what is driving this
unprofitability (i.e. poor management;
competition, etc)
• Apply and Repeat: As you peel off one
layer and get deeper into the answer,
you will again need to understand the
issue in more depth and you repeat Why
on this new cause that has been
articulated
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EXAMPLE
Using the 5 Whys to follow the chain of causation until arriving
at a root cause

Problem: Customers are upset because they are being shipped bad products.

Why?
1. Why are customers being shipped bad products?
– Because manufacturing built the products to a specification that is different
from what the customer and the sales person agreed to.
Why?
2. Why did manufacturing build the products to a different specification
than that of sales?
– Because the sales person expedites work on the shop floor by calling the
Why? head of manufacturing directly to begin work. An error happened when the
specifications were being communicated or written down.

3. Why does the sales person call the head of manufacturing directly to
start work instead of having customers enter specifications directly?
Why? – Because the “start work” form requires the sales director’s approval.

4. Why does the form contain an approval for the sales director?
– Because the sales director needs to be continually updated on sales for
discussions with the CEO.
Why?
5. Why does the sale director need to be continually updated instead of
updating CEO at regular intervals in the year?
– Because the CEO does not set long term sales targets and wants to be
invoved in each significant sales decision.

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