How to prepare for an expert interview

Prepare for an expert interview by deciding what the conversation must change. Then separate what you can learn from public sources from what requires someone’s firsthand experience. The result should be a short brief and a few prioritized questions, not a long list of everything you do not know about an industry.

A useful test is whether you can finish this sentence: “After this conversation, we should be better able to decide ___.” If the answer is simply “understand the market,” narrow it to a choice, a process, or an assumption that affects your next move.

Start with a decision brief

Use this original template to organize preparation:

Keep a distinction between a fact and an interpretation of that fact. A vendor’s public product page can show that it advertises a feature. It does not establish that customers use the feature successfully or that the feature explains purchasing decisions.

The Small Business Administration distinguishes existing-source market research from direct research with people. Use public material for context and broad data, then focus the conversation on the specific business questions that remain. Read the SBA’s market research guidance.

A worked example: choosing a launch workflow

Imagine a fictional founder considering software for equipment maintenance teams. The immediate choice is whether to investigate planned inspections or urgent repair coordination first. The founder has read public descriptions of both workflows but does not know how responsibilities change when an urgent repair interrupts scheduled work.

The expert is a former maintenance planner who personally coordinated those interruptions. The brief might say:

Decision: Choose which workflow deserves a focused customer-research round.

Known: Public maintenance software pages describe scheduling and work orders. These descriptions show available functionality, not user demand.

Uncertain: Where an urgent repair changes the planned schedule, who makes the tradeoff, and what information is missing at that point.

Experience sought: A firsthand account of handling a disruption within the expert’s own operating context.

Output: A process map with decision owners and unresolved questions.

This brief does not ask the expert to certify the entire product opportunity. It asks for experience that can sharpen the next investigation.

Prepare three question types

First, prepare orientation questions that establish the scope of the person’s experience: “What responsibility did you have for the schedule?” “During which period?” “What kinds of sites or teams did you support?” Keep these brief enough to leave room for the substantive account.

Second, prepare event questions: “Choose an urgent repair that interrupted planned work. What happened from the first notice through the revised schedule?” Follow the information, decisions, and handoffs. These questions use the expert’s experience instead of inviting a general industry lecture.

Third, prepare interpretation questions after the example: “Which parts of that situation were ordinary?” “What would have been different at a smaller site?” “What would make you question our assumption?” Asking after the event helps you connect an opinion to the experience behind it.

GOV.UK recommends preparing an interview discussion guide, trying it out, and retaining flexibility during the conversation. Use the guide as a route through the uncertainty rather than a questionnaire that must be completed line by line. Read the in-depth interview guidance.

Send enough context to make the call useful

A short advance note can include the purpose, broad topics, expected format and duration, who will attend, and any material the person needs to review. Explain whether you plan to take notes or request recording permission.

Do not send a dense deck unless reading it is part of the agreed activity. If substantial preparation is needed, make that expectation explicit before the person commits. Otherwise you may spend the first part of the session discovering that the required homework was never feasible.

In the maintenance example, the note could ask the planner to think of a nonconfidential disruption they can describe. It should not request an employer’s internal maintenance reports or customer-specific records. A useful process discussion does not depend on obtaining those documents.

Keep your product pitch out of the opening context when it would steer the account. You can explain your research purpose without telling the person which workflow you hope they will endorse.

Allocate attention, not just minutes

Mark the questions as essential, useful, or optional. The labels should reflect the decision brief. In the example, identifying who authorizes the revised schedule may be essential; discussing every software vendor in the category is probably optional.

Prepare a branch for an unexpected answer. If the expert never personally handled urgent coordination, shift to the part they did witness and mark the missing experience. Do not encourage them to speculate simply to preserve the planned agenda.

Have one person lead the conversation when possible. A second team member can capture notes and track open questions. If several colleagues attend, agree how follow-ups will be introduced so the session does not become a sequence of unrelated requests.

Decide how you will preserve the evidence

Set up a note with separate spaces for firsthand account, interpretation, public reference, and follow-up. Record dates and scope beside claims that could change over time. Mark an exact quotation only when you have captured the wording accurately and are permitted to retain it.

Before the call ends, summarize the process as you understood it and invite correction: “I heard that the planner identifies options, but the site manager authorizes the change. Have I combined two different situations?” This checks your interpretation without asking the expert to approve your business idea.

Afterward, complete the promised output while the context is fresh. The maintenance founder’s map may reveal that the next useful person is a site manager who made the tradeoff, or a technician who received the revised assignment.

Preparation succeeds when the interview leaves you with a sharper question and a defensible next action. A folder of background reading and a full hour of conversation are inputs. The decision record is the useful result.