The Questions That Open a Life

Begin With a Decision

A useful interview can start smaller than a biography. Ask a guest to describe a decision that changed how they work, then establish when it happened, what options existed and who else was involved. This proposed MAN TARGET framework is a craft template, not an account of a conversation that has taken place. Its purpose is to make an eventual interview more revealing without manufacturing intimacy. Specific experience gives a guest something to examine and gives the reader something sturdier than an elegantly rehearsed statement about success or ambition.

• Ask which decision was difficult and what alternatives were available.
• Follow an abstract answer with a request for one concrete example.
• Confirm recording consent and attribution before the conversation begins.

Stay With the Answer

Prepare questions, but do not use them as a conveyor belt. When a guest mentions a mistake, ask what they noticed at the time and what became clear only later. If they use a broad word such as discipline, ask what that looked like on an ordinary day. Give them room to correct your interpretation. A strong follow-up is not necessarily confrontational; it is precise. Silence can be useful, provided it is not deployed as theatre or pressure. The aim is an answer the guest can honestly stand behind.

The best question opens a door; the follow-up notices what is inside.

Close With Responsibility

Ask what the guest is still learning and what a reader might misunderstand about the work discussed. Before recording or publishing, establish consent, attribution and any agreed boundaries. Check names, dates and consequential factual claims through suitable sources; a confident answer is not independent verification. In editing, preserve meaning rather than assembling a sharper personality from disconnected fragments. If something remains uncertain, clarify it or leave it out. A compelling interview is a made piece of journalism, but the making should never require inventing what a person said or experienced.