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PART D: LEADING AND MANAGING INDIVIDUALS AND TEAMS 
 
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7.3 Conduct of the interview 
Questions should be paced and put carefully. The interviewer should not be trying to confuse the 
candidate, plunging immediately into demanding questions or picking on isolated points; neither, 
however, should the interviewee be allowed to digress or gloss over important points. The interviewer 
must retain control over the information-gathering process. 
Various questioning techniques may be used; they are listed in the table below. 
Type of question 
Comment 
Open questions
('Who …? What …? Where …? When …? Why ….?) These force candidates to 
put together their own responses in complete sentences. This encourages them to 
talk, keeps the interview flowing, and is most revealing ('Why do you want to be 
an accountant?') 
Probing questions
These aim to discover the deeper significance of the candidate's answers, 
especially if they are initially dubious, uninformative, too short, or too vague. ('But 
what was it about accountancy that 
particularly
 
appealed to you?') 
Closed questions
Invite only 'yes' or 'no' answers: ('Did you …?, 'Have you …?'). This may be useful 
where there are points to be pinned down ('Did you pass your exam?') but there 
are several disadvantages to such questions. 
(a) They elicit an answer 
only
 
to the question asked.
(b) Candidates cannot express their personality, or interact with the interviewer 
on a deeper level. 
(c) They make it easier for candidates to conceal things ('You never 
asked
 
me…'). 
(d) They make the interviewer work very hard. 
Problem solving 
questions
Present the candidate with a situation and ask them to explain how they would 
deal with it. ('How would you motivate your staff to do a task that they did not 
want to do?') Such questions are used to establish whether the candidate will be 
able to deal with the sort of problems that are likely to arise in the job.