Expert interview: how to find, run and document one without crossing compliance lines

An expert interview is a conversation with someone who has firsthand professional experience of an industry, role or process you need to understand. Done well, it can replace a lot of reading: in an hour, someone who has done the work explains how it actually happens, who decides, and where it breaks.

A good expert interview has five parts: decide what the call must inform, choose someone whose experience matches, ask about what they personally did, stay clear of information they can't share, and write notes that separate what they saw from what they think. The line to respect throughout is simple. An expert can share their own experience and general industry knowledge. They can't share confidential information or material nonpublic information, and you shouldn't ask.

When an expert interview fits

Use an expert interview when your question is about how an industry or process works: how buyers evaluate vendors, how a regulation shapes a workflow, what an implementation involves, or why a market is organized the way it is. People who have seen many cases can describe patterns that a single customer can't.

Use a customer interview when your question is about what a particular kind of customer does and needs. An expert's account of customers is secondhand. In practice you often need both: experts to map the territory and sharpen your questions, customers to answer them.

A worked example

Suppose you are a founder considering software for companies that ship temperature-controlled food, and you need to decide whether to sell to the shippers or to the refrigerated trucking carriers that move their freight. You have read public material on cold-chain rules but don't know who at a shipper chooses a carrier, or what happens when a load arrives warm. This example is hypothetical.

A useful expert would be a former sales manager at a refrigerated carrier who sold to food shippers. The five steps below follow that call.

1. Decide what the call must inform

Finish this sentence: "After this call, we should be better able to decide ___." Here it is "whether shippers or carriers own the problem of proving a load stayed cold." How to prepare for an expert interview turns this into a one-page brief that separates public facts, open questions and the experience you need.

2. Choose someone whose experience matches the question

Titles are a weak guide. Look for someone who personally did the relevant work, at the right kind of company, recently enough to matter. Ask early in the call: "What was your role in that, and when?" If they only saw it from the side, adjust your questions or mark those answers as secondhand. How to choose the right expert covers checking fit before you book.

3. Ask about what they personally did

GOV.UK's interview guidance applies to experts as much as to users: focus on stories and real examples rather than how things "should" happen, ask open questions such as "how do you…?", follow up with "can you tell me more about…?", and stay quiet so the other person does most of the talking (Using in-depth interviews).

For the cold-chain call: "Think of a load that arrived out of temperature while you were in that role. Walk me through what happened, from the first phone call to who paid for it." Then follow the decisions and the paperwork. Expert interview questions for an unfamiliar industry has a question map for tracing work, money and decisions through a market.

4. Stay clear of restricted information

The most important rule in any expert interview: don't ask for information the expert isn't allowed to share, and move on when they say they can't.

Material nonpublic information (MNPI) is the category with legal consequences. The SEC's Investor.gov glossary describes illegal insider trading as buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, on the basis of material, nonpublic information about that security. It says violations can also include tipping that information to someone else and trading by the person tipped (Insider Trading). If you invest, or work for someone who does, an expert describing an employer's unreleased results, pending deals or unannounced contracts is exactly what to avoid. This is general information, not legal advice; if you work in investing, follow your firm's compliance process.

Most founders' questions are nowhere near that line, but confidentiality still applies. Instant Expert's paid call compliance rules show one way to draw it. Paid calls may cover general, non-confidential professional experience, workflows, industry practices, purchasing processes, vendor evaluation criteria, pain points and market context, including experience from a current or former employer. They may not cover material nonpublic information, trade secrets, confidential employer or customer information, personal data, or anything under a non-disclosure agreement or similar restriction. Requesters must not pressure respondents to answer restricted questions and must move on when a respondent identifies a restriction.

Ask about their experience in general terms, not about specific current customers, deals or figures. If an answer starts heading into restricted territory, stop and redirect. When an expert can't share what you asked for covers what to say and how to record the gap.

5. Take notes you can act on

Structure your notes so a teammate could use them. For each claim, mark whether the expert saw it firsthand, heard it from others, or is giving an opinion or estimate. Krueger's guidance on analyzing group interviews makes a point that applies here too: give more weight to specific answers based on experience than to vague or impersonal ones (Designing and Conducting Focus Group Interviews).

Before the call ends, summarize what you heard and ask whether you got it right. Afterward, write down what changed about the decision and what you need to learn next. For the cold-chain founder, a hypothetical note might read: "In this person's experience, the carrier's claims team handled warm loads, but the shipper's logistics manager chose carriers. Next: talk to two shipper logistics managers." If two experts tell you different things, what to do when experts disagree helps you work out why.

Your next step

Write the decision sentence, a one-line description of the person whose experience would inform it, and three questions about things they did. Cross out any question that asks for a specific company's confidential numbers.

If you don't know who to call, Instant Expert can find people who match a description you write, such as "former sales managers at refrigerated trucking carriers." You review who it finds, it sends your invitations, and you pay only for calls that get booked. The sales professionals in cold-chain logistics directory page is one place to start. For how this compares with a traditional service, see what is an expert network.