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How to Effectively Conduct an Expert Interview

Michael Brown, GLG Network Member and President of Strategy

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Read the full e-book: Mastering the Expert Interview.

What is an Expert Interview?  

An expert interview is a qualitative research method to help gather in-depth insights and knowledge from individuals with specialized expertise and authority in a specific field, sector, or topic. Subject Matter expert interviews play a pivotal role in the overall research process, serving as a dynamic means to gather firsthand insights on a topic/company, validate hypotheses, and refine strategic initiatives.

Benefits of Subject Matter Expert Interviews in Qualitative Research:    

• Depth of Insight : Expert interviews enable you to delve into complex topics and gain nuanced perspectives that may not be readily available through traditional data sources. Speaking directly to the source also increases the overall credibility of your research.   
• Save Time and Resources : Expert interviews allow you to gather targeting information directly from the source. This focused approach helps reduce the amount of time spent sifting through vast amounts of data from various sources.    
• Customization and Relevance : Unlike standardized reports or syndicated research, expert interviews offer tailored insights that align with the specific objectives and priorities of your research project.  
• Interactive Dialogue : Expert interviews foster an interactive dialogue between researchers and subject matter experts, allowing for real-time clarification, exploration, and synthesis of ideas.  
• Agility and Adaptability : In today’s fast-paced business environment, agility is paramount. Expert interviews provide a flexible and adaptive approach to research, allowing you to pivot quickly in response to evolving market conditions or emerging opportunities.  

Whether it’s financial institutions seeking market insights or corporate firms navigating strategic decisions, expert interviews offer unparalleled advantages.

How to Conduct a Subject Matter Expert Interview

Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle once said, “Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.” When you’re facing a challenging decision, the insights gained by interviewing subject matter experts (SMEs) can help guide you to the best decision before taking action. To make the most of those interviews, it’s best to follow these interviewing best practices so you can maximize the value of your time and effort.

Planning the interview is critical. In fact, it will determine the success of the interview itself and the insights you glean. Planning involves two very important documents. The first is the interview plan, which focuses on selecting the right experts you wish to speak with. The second is the interview guide, which details the very specific questions you intend to discuss with the expert or experts you select.

The Expert Interview Plan

Start with the end in mind and define your goals for doing the research. It is important to know what decision or action you intend to take as a result of your research. From here, you can work backward to determine the intelligence and analysis required to make a well-formed decision. And finally, work backward to outline what raw data and insights are needed to develop that intelligence.

The Expert Interview Plan in Action

Let’s bring this funneling process to life with a fictional example. Imagine that a chemical company wants to understand whether it should enter the market for lubricants in the commercial aircraft engine components business. Before acting, the firm wants to reinforce its decision with intelligence about the opportunity size, the cost and ease of market entry, and the sustainability of profits should it go into that business.

To make a well-informed decision, our imaginary chemical company decides to develop intelligence from data and insights that include primary and secondary sources to answer a set of specific questions. How big is the market? How often are lubricants changed? How much lubricant is used per engine? What lubricants are currently used? Why? How does the value chain work? What are the costs at each step? Is the usage rate likely to change? Are lubricant needs changing? Who are the distinctive suppliers in this area and what differentiates them?

Since much of this data and insight can be developed only with primary sources, our chemical company’s next step is developing an interview plan of the ideal experts who can answer these questions. A first start is to develop keywords that describe unique and specific background characteristics of those experts who have deep industry experience.

In this case, the ideal experts might be OEM project managers , such as those at Pratt & Whitney who specify lubricants and maintenance schedules; airline maintenance managers at carriers such as Delta or America; lubricant formulators at a company such as ExxonMobil Aviation; and managers at base oil suppliers , such as Neste. An expert network like GLG can use these keywords to search and vet the appropriate experts. The final interview plan will not only include the right experts but also sequence the interviews in a logical order that builds your knowledge step by step.

Creating an Expert Interview Guide

As you plan, you should also develop a written interview guide with expert interview questions for the SME. Do not think of writing an interview guide as a creative assignment — this can be frustrating and lead to procrastination. Think of it as a mechanical exercise that leads to questions that flow naturally from the intelligence and insight you need to address the decisions you intend to make.

By viewing your project at a macro level and breaking down what you need into the “intelligence themes” seen on the left-hand side, you can translate those into the specific questions in the right-hand column. Many methodologies are available for distilling these questions, including classics such as Porter’s “five forces” analysis and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

As you finalize the guide, strike any questions already answered through secondary research and make sure the questions that remain are open-ended so that they won’t be answered by a simple yes or no. It is imperative to prompt as much insight and discussion as possible.

Remain neutral and unbiased when you frame the questions. The goal of the interview process is to get objective input from an expert — not to persuade them that the hypothesis or business idea you have in mind is the correct one and worth pursuing.

It is important that the questions you ask don’t violate third-party secrecy agreements and securities regulations. It is perfectly acceptable to ask an expert about any subject matter, but don’t inadvertently move into an area where the expert is legally bound not to divulge information.

You can discuss market conditions with an employee of a large operating company, but you cannot discuss the current performance of his or her business unit. That information is protected by security regulations and usually an employment contract. As a guide, ask about general trends in the industry, your expert’s views on best practices, and what’s typical in the industry — not specific questions about how the expert’s company handles things.

With thoughtful up-front planning that includes a well-crafted interview plan and interview guide, in-depth interviews with subject matter experts will provide the insight you need to make smart decisions and move your business forward.

Read our companion article, Six Steps to Organizing an Expert Interview .

About the Author

Michael Brown is President of StrategyMark, a Yorklyn, Delaware-based firm providing buy-side analysis and consulting services to the chemical industry. He also serves as an advisor to the board of Inhance Technologies. Earlier, Mr. Brown was a managing partner with TZ Chemicals International Pty. Ltd., the global director of coatings at Quaker Chemical Corp., and a vice president of ChemQuest Group.

Mr. Brown also has extensive expertise advising clients on how they can best engage GLG Network Members. He has been in the GLG network since 2004 and has conducted more than 3,000 consultations with GLG clients, giving him a unique perspective on best practices for getting the most value out of GLG products.

We are the World’s Insight Network, bringing decision makers the insight it takes to get ahead. When leaders need to make informed decisions, GLG provides meaningful connections through our network of experts, the world’s most varied and qualified source of first-hand expertise, with thousands of experts recruited daily to tackle tomorrow’s questions. Learn more about GLG expert calls or fill out the contact form below to speak with the right subject matter expert for your research.

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Introduction: Expert Interviews — An Introduction to a New Methodological Debate

Cite this chapter.

• Alexander Bogner ,
• Beate Littig &
• Wolfgang Menz  

Part of the book series: Research Methods Series ((REMES))

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Before we go any further, we would like to begin by providing the reader with a step-by-step introduction to the methodological debate surrounding expert interviews. In doing so, we will start with a brief discussion of the generally accepted advantages and risks of expert interviews in research practice (1). We will follow this by outlining current trends in the sociological debate regarding experts and expertise, since expert interviews are — at least on the surface — defined by their object, namely the expert (2). We will then conclude with a look at the current methodological debate regarding expert interviews, an overview of the layout and structure of this book, as well as summaries of the 12 articles it contains (3).

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Methodological Framework

Expert Interviews on Triangulated and Non-triangulated Findings

Interviews in the social sciences

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Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria

Alexander Bogner

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Beate Littig

Institute for Social Science Research, Germany

Wolfgang Menz

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© 2009 Alexander Bogner, Beate Littig and Wolfgang Menz

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Bogner, A., Littig, B., Menz, W. (2009). Introduction: Expert Interviews — An Introduction to a New Methodological Debate. In: Bogner, A., Littig, B., Menz, W. (eds) Interviewing Experts. Research Methods Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244276_1

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The expert interview as a method of qualitative social research

Term Paper , 2007 , 31 Pages , Grade: 2,0

Autor:in: Stefanie Monke (Author)

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The expert interview is a frequently used method in empirical social research. It is used in policy and implementation research, in industrial sociology, in elite and use research and in many areas of applied social research. The main interest in the interview is the expert knowledge, the expertise of a person (cf. Bohnsack et al. 2003, p. 57). Against the background of the increasing use of the expert interview in nursing science, this interview form is presented as a method of qualitative social research in the first part of this paper. A further chapter deals with the question of who can be drawn into the circle of experts for this interview form. The following chapters contain the concrete application of the expert interview as well as the evaluation of the data. An excursus at the end of the thesis introduces the expert interview in health and care research. A critical methodological discussion of the expert interview concludes this paper.

Inhaltsverzeichnis (Table of Contents)

• Introduction
• The expert interview
• Scientific and methodological foundations
• Strategy and approach of empirical social research
• Methodological classification of the expert interviews
• The circle of experts for the expert interview
• The expert and the expert knowledge according to Meuser and Nagel
• Experts with operational knowledge
• Experts with contextual knowledge
• Experts in exploration
• The expert term according to Bogner and Menz
• The voluntarist expert concept
• The constructivist concept of experts
• The sociological concept of experts in the sociology of knowledge
• The expert after glasses and laudel
• The expert as a privileged person in a functional context
• The expert as a person with special knowledge of social issues.
• The application of the expert interview and selection of experts
• Application forms of the expert interview
• The guideline-based expert interview as Survey method
• From research question to interview guide
• From the research question to select the experts
• The guiding questions and guideline construction
• Typing of interview questions
• Guide function
• Practical information on guideline construction
• Data collection considerations
• Case group selection and case size
• Conducting the expert interview and the role income of the interviewers
• The interview situation as a potential problem area
• Notes on data evaluation
• The expert interview in health and nursing research
• Application examples of health and nursing research
• Frequency of application and methodological reflection
• Criticism of the method of expert interview
• Criticism of the concept of experts and expertsknow
• Other interview procedures with experts

Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte (Objectives and Key Themes)

This term paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the expert interview method, a widely used technique in empirical social research. The paper explores the scientific and methodological foundations of expert interviews, including their history, development, and contemporary applications. It also examines the different types of experts and their respective knowledge domains.

• Methodological foundations and classifications of the expert interview
• The concept of expertise and the identification of suitable experts
• The application of expert interviews in various research contexts
• Data collection and evaluation strategies in expert interviews
• The role of expert interviews in health and nursing research

Zusammenfassung der Kapitel (Chapter Summaries)

• Introduction: This chapter provides a general introduction to the expert interview method and its significance in empirical social research, specifically within nursing science. It highlights the main objectives and structure of the term paper.
• The expert interview: This chapter delves into the nature of the expert interview as a research method, emphasizing its advantages and limitations. It explores the theoretical framework underlying the approach and its relevance in uncovering expert knowledge.
• The circle of experts for the expert interview: This section focuses on identifying and characterizing different types of experts, drawing on various theoretical perspectives. It examines the different categories of experts, including those with operational knowledge, contextual knowledge, and those involved in exploration.
• The guideline-based expert interview as Survey method: This chapter outlines the practical aspects of conducting an expert interview, including the construction of interview guides, selecting experts, and formulating appropriate questions. It also discusses data collection considerations and potential challenges.
• The expert interview in health and nursing research: This chapter explores the application of expert interviews within the context of health and nursing research, highlighting specific examples and discussing methodological considerations. It emphasizes the relevance of this method in addressing healthcare-related research questions.

Schlüsselwörter (Keywords)

The primary keywords and focus topics of this term paper encompass the expert interview as a method in qualitative research, expert knowledge, methodological considerations, and the application of this technique in healthcare research, particularly in nursing science. Key concepts include the different categories of experts, the construction of interview guides, data collection strategies, and critical reflections on the strengths and limitations of the expert interview approach.