Key Principles of Social Enterprises: Has a clear goal as its core purpose

Know your goals and questions ahead of time
Conduct as much preliminary research as possible and be prepared with a list of questions that vary from general topics to more nuanced and specific details. Be sure to also take time before the interviews to understand the specific socio-economic and environmental contexts of your audience and the implications those might have on a given problem. Doing so will better inform your questions demonstrating to your audience that you are invested in the issue and doing your due diligence.
Build trust to make space for honesty
People are trained to be polite and don’t often provide their most honest opinions even when asked to do so. It is the responsibility of the interviewer to ensure a safe environment and to explicitly ask subjects to be entirely honest and up-front.
Ask open ended questions
It is impossible to fully understand a person’s motivations or needs by asking yes or no questions. Instead, ask questions that begin with “How” or “Why” and if you must ask a yes/no question, be sure to follow up by asking them to explain further.
Listen, don’t talk
Active listening requires an interviewer to devote their time to learning more. Leave space and time for an interviewee to elaborate on their answers even if they pause while speaking. To confirm that you hear your interviewee accurately, it is also beneficial to repeat answers back to them as you take diligent notes. With the permission of your interviewee, you may also ask to record the conversation which will be helpful to listen to following the interview in case you missed any key details.
*Constable, G., “12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews”, December 6, 2012.
Empathy Mapping
To fully tackle the challenge that a social enterprise is facing and to ensure that it is offering a contextually and culturally appropriate solution, empathy maps can be very useful. An empathy map is a simple and easy-to-use tool that organizes notes from an interview and captures the nuance of any conversation. People are complex individuals so it is normal to notice contradictions or inconsistencies in conversations. The most important part of interviewing is being able to find patterns or a common thread that appears throughout the research phase. Those patterns typically make way for a deeper understanding of the challenge that a social enterprise is taking and in turn, more relevant solutions can be considered. An example of an empathy map can be found below:

The “Says” quadrant is where direct quotes from an interview are written down. These verbatim pieces of qualitative data can be used later as testimonials about an ongoing issue and can help to set a baseline for impact measurement at a later time. The “Thinks” quadrant represents inferences made about what the interviewee may be thinking but is reluctant to share. It may be helpful to consider what values your interviewee holds and why they are sharing what they are. The “Feels” quadrant is where notes can be taken about the interviewee’s emotional state - what excites them? What is concerning to them? How have their feelings changed over time? Lastly, the “Does” quadrant identifies the actual behaviours of the interviewee. What do they do already to manage the issue at hand? What actions have they taken in the past?