The quality of qualitative research findings depends almost entirely on the quality of the questions used to generate them. An interview with a thoughtful, well-placed participant can produce shallow data if the questions do not give the participant permission to go deep. A less-experienced researcher with better questions will consistently outperform a more experienced one who relies on surface-level probing.
One pattern that emerges clearly from conducting over 1000 business interviews: in a typical 60-minute interview, only 5 to 10 minutes contain genuinely important material — the moments when a participant says something unrehearsed, reveals an assumption they did not know they held, or describes an experience in a way that reframes the research question. Everything else is setup. Good questions are what create those moments and what get you deeper once you are in one. The rest — rapport, pacing, note-taking — matters, but the question is the engine.
A related insight from the same experience: the best interviewers are genuinely curious rather than systematically thorough. People are good at detecting when someone is working through a list versus actually interested in what they say. Participants who sense the former give rehearsed, surface-level answers. Participants who sense the latter go deeper. Question design matters enormously, but the attitude behind the questions matters too — and genuine curiosity cannot be faked for long.
This guide covers the main question types used in qualitative interviews, what distinguishes good from poor examples, how to build rapport and go deeper when a participant stays at the surface, and how a well-constructed guide supports consistent, comparable data across multiple interviews.
What makes a question good in a qualitative interview?
A good qualitative interview question does one or more of the following:
It invites narrative. The participant tells a story or describes an experience in their own terms, rather than selecting from implicit categories provided by the question. "Walk me through what happened the week before you decided to switch" invites narrative. "Were you happy with the service?" does not.
It is non-leading. The question does not signal what answer is expected or preferred. "What was your experience like?" is non-leading. "Did you find the process frustrating?" is leading (it suggests frustration as the expected response).
It is specific enough to focus the participant on the relevant experience. "Tell me about your work" is too broad for most research purposes. "Tell me about the last time you had to make a decision under time pressure" directs the participant to a specific type of experience that is tractable.
It is open-ended. Yes/no questions do not generate qualitative data. "Do you use the reporting feature regularly?" closes down the conversation. "How does the reporting feature fit into your workflow?" opens it.
The 6 main types of interview questions
1. Opening and orienting questions
Used at the start of an interview to orient the participant to the research purpose and to put them at ease. These are typically broad and low-stakes.
Good examples:
- "To start, could you tell me a bit about your role and how long you've been in it?"
- "Before we get into the specifics, I'd love to understand your background in [research area]. How did you first get involved with it?"
What to avoid:
- Starting with a complex or sensitive question before rapport is established
- Questions that ask for opinions before the participant has described their experience (people give richer opinions after they have narrated their experience, not before)
2. Narrative and experience questions
These form the core of most qualitative interviews. They ask the participant to describe experiences in their own words, generating rich, contextual data.
Good examples:
- "Can you walk me through the last time you [experienced the phenomenon]?"
- "Tell me about a specific instance when [topic area] was particularly challenging."
- "Describe what a typical [day/week/decision process] looks like for you."
Poor examples:
- "Do you often experience [problem]?" (yes/no, leading)
- "How important is [topic] to you?" (asks for rating, not experience)
- "What do you think about [topic]?" (too vague; will generate opinion without the experiential foundation that makes opinions interpretable)
Why experience-first questions work: When you ask someone to describe a specific experience, they give you context, detail, and language that reveals their mental model of the situation. When you ask for an opinion directly, you get a socially filtered version of what they think you want to hear.
3. Probing and follow-up questions
Probes are used to deepen a response that has remained at the surface. They signal to the participant that you want more, and that going deeper is welcome. Good probes are brief and non-leading.
Good probing examples:
- "Can you say more about that?"
- "What happened next?"
- "You mentioned [specific word or phrase they used]. What did you mean by that?"
- "How did that make you feel at the time?"
- "What were you thinking when that happened?"
- "Can you give me a specific example?"
Poor probing examples:
- "So you found that frustrating?" (puts words in their mouth)
- "That sounds like a significant problem — is it?" (leading with your interpretation)
- Repeating the same question in different words without pausing to let the participant respond
The best probes are often the simplest. A pause after a participant finishes speaking is one of the most effective probes available: it signals that you are expecting more, without directing what that more should be.
4. Clarifying questions
Used when the participant's meaning is unclear or when they have used a term that may mean different things to different people.
Good examples:
- "When you say [term], what do you mean exactly?"
- "I want to make sure I understand — are you saying [paraphrase], or something different?"
- "You mentioned [concept]. How do you define that in your work?"
What to avoid:
- Pretending to understand when you do not (common because it feels less awkward in the moment, but it produces data that cannot be interpreted reliably)
- Asking clarifying questions so frequently that the flow of the interview is disrupted
5. Contrast and comparison questions
These questions ask the participant to compare experiences, options, or time periods, which often surfaces distinctions that straightforward description misses.
Good examples:
- "How does your current approach compare to what you used to do?"
- "If you were to describe the difference between [option A] and [option B] to a colleague, how would you put it?"
- "What made that situation different from the usual way things work?"
- "You mentioned both [X] and [Y] — what would you say is the main difference between them?"
Contrast questions are particularly effective because comparison requires the participant to articulate what they value, what they notice, and how they categorise experience: precisely the data that is most useful for qualitative analysis.
6. Hypothetical questions
Used carefully, hypothetical questions can surface values and priorities that a participant might not articulate in response to direct questions about their experience.
Good examples:
- "If you could change one thing about [process/product/experience], what would it be?"
- "If you had to explain [topic] to someone entirely new to the field, how would you describe it?"
- "Imagine you had [resources, permission, time] — what would you do differently?"
Use with care: Hypothetical questions produce hypothetical data. What people say they would do is not always what they would actually do. Use hypothetical questions to surface priorities and values, not to predict behaviour. For understanding actual behaviour, experience questions are more reliable.
Building rapport before you get to the substance
Recommended reading
Effective business interviews - Tips and tricks from a former McKinsey Partner
The participant's willingness to go deep depends heavily on how safe they feel in the interview. Rapport is not about being likeable; it is about creating conditions where the participant trusts that their candour will be used respectfully and that there are no wrong answers.
Before the interview:
- Send a clear briefing about the purpose of the interview and how data will be used
- Confirm confidentiality commitments in writing before the interview
- Arrive (or be online) early and spend two to three minutes in informal conversation before starting to record
At the start:
- Explain the format: you will be asking them to describe experiences in some detail, and there are no right or wrong answers
- Invite them to tell you if a question is unclear or if they do not know the answer
- Tell them they can decline to answer any question
- Confirm permission to record, and explain what will happen to the recording
During the interview:
- Show active listening: nod, use brief acknowledgements ("I see," "right," "that's interesting"), and maintain attention
- Do not interrupt except to probe
- Do not express surprise or scepticism at answers (even if what they say is surprising)
- Use the participant's own language back to them in probes rather than substituting your terminology
How to go deeper when participants stay at the surface
Some participants give brief, general answers. This is common and not a sign that they have nothing to say. It usually means one of the following:
- They are not sure what level of detail is appropriate
- They are being professionally cautious
- They have not yet thought about the topic at the level of specificity you need
- The question was too abstract
The techniques to go deeper:
Ask for a specific example. If a participant says "We have regular customer feedback sessions," ask "Could you walk me through the last one? What happened?" The move from general statement to specific instance almost always produces richer data.
Reflect back what they said and wait. "So if I understand you correctly, [brief paraphrase]. Is there more to that?" Reflection signals that you were listening and invites elaboration without leading.
Ask about the exceptions. "Is that always how it works? Are there cases where it plays out differently?" Exceptions often reveal the mechanism behind the general pattern.
Ask about the impact. "What effect does that have on [team/customer/outcome]?" Moving from what happened to what it means or what it caused deepens the narrative.
Ask about what came before. "How did it get to that point?" or "What led up to that?" Context about the antecedents often reveals the structural dynamics that a description of the situation alone would not.
Why consistency across interviews matters
The richest insight from qualitative research comes not from individual interviews but from patterns across many interviews. For those patterns to be meaningful, the interviews need to be exploring the same territory in roughly the same way.
This is the core purpose of an interview guide: not to read questions verbatim in a fixed order (which produces stilted interviews), but to ensure that every interview covers the same key topics and that the same core questions are asked in a consistent way.
Without guide consistency, comparison across interviews is unreliable. If interview A spent 20 minutes on pricing and five minutes on onboarding, and interview B reversed that proportion, you cannot compare responses about onboarding across the two interviews because the context within which each participant discussed it was different.
A well-constructed guide includes:
- An opening section with orienting questions
- Core topic sections in a logical order, each with a main question and a set of pre-planned probes
- A closing section inviting the participant to raise anything not covered
- Flexibility markers indicating where the interviewer can follow tangents versus where they need to return to the main thread
For guidance on building the guide itself, see how to write a perfect interview guide. For the practical mechanics of recording, transcribing, and beginning analysis, see the practical setup guide for interviews.
Different interview types, different question emphases
The question types above apply across interview formats, but the emphasis varies by purpose:
Customer discovery interviews: Emphasis on narrative and experience questions, specifically around the job the customer is trying to do, the circumstances that trigger product use, and what alternatives they considered. Contrast questions are powerful here. See jobs-to-be-done interviews.
Exit interviews: Emphasis on the timeline of the decision, the trigger moment, and the comparison between the current situation and what led to the departure. Probes about what would have needed to be different are particularly useful. See exit interview analysis.
Expert interviews: Emphasis on factual claims about market dynamics, structural mechanics, and competitive dynamics, with probes to understand the basis for the expert's view. Contrast and comparison questions ("how does this compare to five years ago?") work well.
Focus interviews: Structured around a specific stimulus or experience (a product, a document, a scenario), using experience and reaction questions to understand how the participant interprets and responds to it. See what is a focus interview.
Skip-level and employee interviews: Emphasis on specific recent experiences rather than general assessments. Contrast questions ("how has this changed over the past year?") and exception questions ("are there situations where this works well?") surface nuance that general satisfaction questions miss. See skip-level interview analysis.
From interviews to analysis
Consistent, well-conducted interviews produce transcripts that are ready for systematic analysis. The transcript quality (full verbatim transcription rather than summarised notes) determines how much you can extract in analysis.
Once transcripts are ready, Skimle's AI-assisted analysis processes them systematically: identifying themes across the corpus, grouping relevant excerpts, and surfacing patterns that would require weeks of manual review to find. Every theme traces back to the specific quotes that support it, so findings are defensible and auditable.
For teams running multiple interview studies, Skimle's metadata tagging allows cross-tabulation of themes by interview type, participant segment, or any other variable, turning 20 or 30 interview transcripts into a structured, comparable evidence base. See how to analyse customer interviews for the end-to-end workflow.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions should an interview guide have?
A 60-minute interview guide typically includes 5-8 main questions, each with 3-5 planned probes. More questions than this usually means you will rush the interview to cover everything, which produces breadth at the expense of depth. Qualitative interviews are not surveys: fewer, deeper questions consistently produce better data than many shallow ones.
Should I pilot my interview guide?
Always. A pilot interview with someone who is not part of your research sample (a colleague, a friendly professional contact) reveals whether your questions are clear, whether the order is logical, and whether the timing is realistic. Common discoveries from piloting: questions that participants interpret differently from how you intended, topics that take much longer to explore than expected, and questions that the participant answers before you ask them (because an earlier question made the answer obvious).
How do I handle a participant who gives very long answers?
Very long answers are usually a sign that the participant is engaged, but they may also indicate that the question was too broad or that the participant is processing something publicly. To redirect gently, wait for a natural pause and say "That's really helpful. I want to make sure we get to [topic]. Can I ask you about that now?" This acknowledges their contribution without shutting it down.
Can I use the same interview guide across different participant types?
In principle, yes. In practice, it is usually better to have a shared core section (the same key questions for every participant) and tailored sections for different participant types. A customer interview and a competitor expert interview might share questions about market dynamics but diverge significantly in questions about product experience.
How do I build interview skills?
Practice matters more than training. Record your early interviews and listen back to them: you will hear where you interrupted, where you asked leading questions, where you accepted a surface-level answer when a probe would have gone deeper. Review the transcripts too: look at the length and specificity of participant answers. Short, general answers almost always indicate a question that needed a probe.
Ready to turn your interviews into systematic insights? Try Skimle for free and upload your transcripts and let AI-assisted analysis surface the patterns across your interview corpus that manual review would take weeks to find.
Related reading: How to write a perfect interview guide | How to conduct effective business interviews | How to analyse customer interviews
About the authors
Henri Schildt is a Professor of Strategy at Aalto University School of Business and co-founder of Skimle. He has published over a dozen peer-reviewed articles using qualitative methods, including work in Academy of Management Journal, Organisation Science, and Strategic Management Journal. His research focuses on organisational strategy, innovation, and qualitative methodology. Google Scholar profile
Olli Salo is a former Partner at McKinsey & Company where he spent 18 years helping clients understand the markets and themselves, develop winning strategies and improve their operating models. He has done over 1000 client interviews and published over 10 articles on McKinsey.com and beyond. LinkedIn profile
Sources
- The Focused Interview: A Manual of Problems and Procedures — Merton, Fiske & Kendall (1990), Free Press
- Qualitative Research Interviewing — Rubin & Rubin (2011), SAGE
- Interviewing as Qualitative Research — Seidman (2019), Teachers College Press
- Research Interviewing: The Range of Techniques — Gillham (2005), Open University Press
