Ten Steps to a Great Interview

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1. If possible, get permission to record the interview, or at least take copious notes: Recording allows you to pay attention to your subject, but can intimidate some people. Notes can be a distraction, but they do force you to pay attention. The objective is to capture as much of the interview as possible, as literally as possible. You will always learn more from a second listen or read of what your subject told you.
2. Make sure you’re talking to the right person: A brief advance discussion can determine whether the person you’ve scheduled the interview with has the information you’re looking for, or whether someone else would be a better candidate, saving you and your subject a lot of wasted time.
3. Arrange, plan & research the interview in advance: The time you spend querying your subject about information you could have researched in advance is time that could be spent delving deeper into your subject’s mind — which is the most valuable part of the interview. Don’t show up uninvited — agree on time, place, length, format, scope, and purpose of the interview in advance.
4. Consider whether to send the questions in advance: This can help your subject prepare better, but could also inhibit him/her, if you ask supplementary questions that he/she’s not prepared for. Make it clear that you reserve the right to ask additional questions. Unless you want written responses to your questions instead of an interview at all, discourage your subject from responding in writing.
5. Establish rapport and trust with your subject up front: Thank him/her up front for his/her time and cooperation, set the ground rules, ask if there are subjects you should avoid, and what use you can/cannot make of the results of your interview. Offer your credentials and a brief background of the reason for the interview if you think it will help establish rapport. If time permits, begin with casual conversation to find common interests and common ground. Consider offering a small gift to the subject at the conclusion of the interview, thank the subject again at the end of the interview, and ask if it is possible to contact him/her with additional questions later, and if so, how. Always be courteous, don’t interrupt, and if the subject appears annoyed, change the subject. And turn your cell phone off during the interview.
6. Listen, explore, challenge, probe: Don’t be wedded to your prepared questions. The discussion could well take you in unforeseen and important directions, so you need to be flexible and let the conversation go where it will. If you don’t understand, say so. If something strikes you as implausible or illogical, ask how your subject knows or why he/she believes what he’s saying. Make close note of sources cited by the subject, and if necessary, ask how names and words are spelled. Think of your audience as you ask questions, and how interested they will be in the questions and answers you’re soliciting. At the end of the interview, offer your subject the opportunity to talk about anything else he/she thinks would be of interest to you or your audience, and if there’s someone else they think you might benefit from talking to.
7. Pay attention to the surroundings: Make observations about the subject’s office (if that’s where you meet) and the subject him/herself — unusual appearance, body language or behaviour. Learn to read between the lines if answers are evasive or emotionally-charged. You might discover some things that the subject doesn’t want to, or didn’t intend to, tell you directly.
8. Respect confidentiality, including that of your sources if requested: Never betray a confidence — or your career as interviewer will be over.
9. Review your tapes/notes right after the interview: You’d be amazed how quickly you’ll forget what he/she meant, or you meant, and additional annotations will remind you later and avoid confusion.
10. Verify what you’ve been told, if you’re going to be relying heavily on it: If your subject has cited other sources, check them. If something has been said is contentious or dubious, run it by another source and check the underlying facts. Some people have hidden agendas, and will have no qualms using you as a mechanism to promote them. And some people are genuinely misinformed, and if you get back to them on a factual error they have made they will probably be grateful to have it scrubbed from the interview transcript.

See? Nothing to it.