Corpus Interviewa
(The Body of the Interview)

February 2006

Is that not really Latin? Sorry—my family couldn’t afford private school.

Yes, I am still talking about interviewing. Last month, we discussed the first four steps of conducting an interview:

1. Break the ice
2. Brief the interviewee
3. Obtain background info from the auditee
4. Ask the interviewee if they have any questions

That is all the preliminary stuff. Now what does the body—the corpus—of the interview look like?

There are two main steps here: Questioning and summarizing (paraphrasing).

Step 5. Questioning

Here is where you get down to business. It is time for you to get answers to your most pertinent questions. I recommend that you go into an interview with no more than six open-ended questions in your little notebook.

What—only six questions!?! Yes, only six. If you ask more than that, or if heaven forbid, you run through a five-page questionnaire, you aren’t conducting an interview—you are conducting a boring, tedious interrogation.

You can take a standard questionnaire and reduce it to a few key questions! Instead of using a questionnaire that asks the following close-ended (yes/no) questions:

• Do you sign all purchase vouchers?
• Do all vouchers get signed by receiving?
• Are purchase vouchers reconciled to invoices?
• Are purchase vouchers pre-numbered and tracked?
• Etc., etc…

You can roll that up into one open-ended question. How do you use purchase vouchers to keep records and track purchases?

Or better yet, eschew the questionnaire in favor of thinking. Yes, thinking. Think about your audit objective and what you need to know to achieve your audit objective. Let me give you a little scenario and then show you an example of some open-ended questions:

Scenario: Your audit objective is to research allegations that bids are not fairly let on construction projects for the city. Here is what you know so far: 70% of all contracts for construction last year were awarded to Sarasita Construction. You also determined that all of the contracts awarded to Sarasita Construction were the result of one manager’s choices. The owner of Sarasita Construction used to work for the city as a contract manager.

Now pretend that you are auditing the city’s comptroller. What open-ended questions would you ask her?

How about these?

• What is your process for qualifying vendors and letting bids on construction contracts?
• How do you ensure that process is fair and inclusive?
• What is your policy regarding former employees as vendors?
  
  

You will probably find out everything you need to know with those three questions. Notice that the most intense question—the question most likely to get the client’s hackles up—is last. You may never even need to ask it because they may tell you the answer to that question early.

Follow-up questions

If you are just beginning to interview, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to ask witty follow-up questions in the moment. On your first dozen interviews you are lucky if you can ask those three questions and get out alive! OK, you will live, but saving face is another worthy goal.

And if you are thinking of witty follow-up questions, you aren’t listening worth a darn. So just ask the question and patiently observe and listen to the answer.

You can follow up later. You can email them or call them or schedule another interview. Just leave the door open at the end with a simple statement: “I will probably have more questions once I sit down to document this interview. May I call you if I have any questions?” An easy and reasonable request.

Step 6. Summarize and paraphrase

Instead of thinking of witty comebacks, just make sure you are listening closely enough to be able to repeat what they said.

Paraphrasing does several powerful things:

• It lets the interviewee know that you respect them enough to listen
• It makes sure you “got it”
• It allows them to change their mind and save face by saying “Oh, no. You misunderstood. What I meant to say was….”

Let me give you an example of how to do it.

“So, you think that City policy is silent about using ex-employees as vendors?”

Then they will likely elaborate some more, giving you more juicy information. They may see the error of their ways without you ever having to point it out to them directly. It’s possible…

The response to each significant question should be summarized or paraphrased, as well as the results of the entire interview.