As mentioned previously, I have been part of a project team that has painstakingly deliberated more than 40 questions ahead of a 45-minute customer interview.

I think all involved knew it would have been impossible to ask all 40 questions, but that doesn’t mean the exercise was pointless. Discussing the questions led us to better understand the answers we wanted to hear, and how best to draw out those answers.

This approach works when the long list of questions is seen as a starting point. It becomes more troublesome when the questions become the goal; when the interview is rated by how many questions were asked.

It’s never the questions. It’s always the answers.

There are many good reasons to have a long list of questions prepared. It’s a great fallback if the interview runs dry. It can codify what is important to you. A pre-agreed list can also give the impression of control. In a global advocacy program, standard questions create consistency.

But just as we don’t want to script answers, we don’t want to make the interview too rigid. The interview is as much an experience as a content-gathering exercise. A chat between two people. If you’re fixated by the set questions, you may prefer to have a robot ask them for you. And while I recognise that idea will be tempting to some, think of the interviewee: would you rather they spend 30 minutes chatting to a fellow human, or an hour with an automated voice?

Good interviewing is listening. It is also about asking the right follow-up question. And that follow-up question may not be a number on your list.