Designs an expert-interview package – sourcing criteria for the right experts, a funneled discussion guide with timing, open-then-probe question design, laddering, and a neutral probe kit – that extracts honest insight without leading the witness.
Designs an expert-interview package - sourcing criteria for the right experts, a funneled discussion guide with timing, open-then-probe question design, laddering, and a neutral probe kit - that extracts honest insight without leading the witness. Use when someone asks "help me write questions for an expert call", "build a discussion guide", "prep me for this expert network interview", or is planning customer-development or domain-expert conversations. Do NOT use for designing a full data-collection study with sampling and hypotheses - use primary-research instead; for synthesizing findings after the interviews are done, use interview-synthesis instead; for desk research that involves no live conversation, use deep-research instead.This is the skill's description: the text your AI reads to decide when the skill applies.
expert-interview/SKILL.md
---
name: Expert Interview
description: Designs an expert-interview package - sourcing criteria for the right experts, a funneled discussion guide with timing, open-then-probe question design, laddering, and a neutral probe kit - that extracts honest insight without leading the witness. Use when someone asks "help me write questions for an expert call", "build a discussion guide", "prep me for this expert network interview", or is planning customer-development or domain-expert conversations. Do NOT use for designing a full data-collection study with sampling and hypotheses - use primary-research instead; for synthesizing findings after the interviews are done, use interview-synthesis instead; for desk research that involves no live conversation, use deep-research instead.
---
# Expert Interview
An hour with the right expert can replace weeks of desk research - or produce nothing but confirmation of what the interviewer already believed. The costly failure this skill prevents is the leading interview: questions that carry the hypothesis inside them, so the expert politely agrees and the team ships on evidence it manufactured itself. A good guide is a structure, not a script.
## Inputs to collect
1. **Learning objectives**: what decision the interviews inform, and the 3-5 things that must be learned. Separate "must learn" from "nice to know" so sections can be cut under time pressure.
2. **The hypothesis being tested**, if any - written down so it can be deliberately kept out of the questions.
3. **Interview length** (default 45-60 minutes) and format (call, in person).
4. **How many experts** and what mix of vantage points (practitioner, buyer, former insider, adjacent-market operator).
5. **Recording and consent constraints**, and any compliance rules (expert networks prohibit asking for confidential or MNPI material - respect this in question design).
## Operating procedure
### Step 1: Source the right experts
The guide cannot rescue the wrong expert. Apply the sourcing rules:
- Prefer **recent, hands-on experience** over seniority: the person who ran the process 18 months ago beats the executive who approved the budget.
- Cover at least **two distinct vantage points** on the question (e.g., a vendor-side seller and a buyer-side evaluator) - one perspective, however expert, is a single data point.Click to play with sound.