Challenges of interviewing elites

Interview

Interviewing elite members can provide a rich source of information for understanding how and why certain decisions are made. However, securing and conducting interviews with elites can often be challenging and disheartening. William Harvey, lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School, specializing on interviewing elites, shares his insights on the challenges one might face when arranging and conducting interviews with elites.

Interview

Interviewing elite members can provide a rich source of information for understanding how and why certain decisions are made. However, securing and conducting interviews with elites can often be challenging and disheartening. William Harvey, lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School, specializing on interviewing elites, shares his insights on the challenges one might face when arranging and conducting interviews with elites.

Interviewee: William Harvey, lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School

Interviewer: Maria Prosviryakova, RIAC

Photo: William Harvey,
lecturer at the University of
Sydney Business School

How practical are the results that come from interviewing elites?

It is a challenging approach and the main challenge is to gain access to elites. But I do think that this method is becoming more and more important. The media and academics are becoming more interested in leaders and particular individuals who exemplify organizations and institutions. We as researchers, whether we are in academia, media, companies or government, we have a responsibility to interview, to challenge, to probe and to critically enquire about these types of individuals, about what they are doing, what roles they play. This approach can be sometimes disheartening in terms of setting up an interview, but it is extremely important for understanding the world we live in.

What is the best way to set up an interview with an elite member?

There are a number of different strategies of getting access to elites. The number one strategy is having a network or connection to the person you want to speak with. If you are trying to contact them coldly through a letter, an e-mail or a telephone call then you most likely won’t get through to them.

Another strategy is to use institutional affiliation. For instance, I might say I am a lecturer from the University of Sydney. Other people might use political or company affiliation. Some kind of connection that would make a link between yourself and the person you are trying to speak with can be extremely helpful.

According to a Duke University’s paper arranging a single interview with Russian political elites reportedly took 15 to 20 calls. Have you ever tried to reach out to Russian elites for an interview?

I have spoken to many elites across a number of different countries, but Russia, unfortunately, was not one of them. But I think there are a lot of common things across different countries. One of the key ways in which the researcher can get through is to give a sense to the elite of what the unique setting point is for them. Because whenever we do research on elite or any other individual we have particular goals that we want to achieve with the interview. But at the same time we are taking up someone else’s time. So, I think it is really important to make it clear what is in it for them. For example, you may give them an executive summary of your findings, or offer to help them with another project or the initiative that they are doing. Thus, whoever I am interviewing I always try to give a sense that it is a reciprocal arrangement, and not just me gaining information from them. And this two-way process of reciprocity is very important.

How to present oneself and begin an interview?

The first point to make is that as a researcher you need to gauge the tone of the interview very quickly. If you are doing a face-to-face interview, you need to get a sense of the type of rapport you are having with that particular person.
If it is over the telephone it is going to be more difficult as you will have to listen carefully in terms of the types of language you use, the tone of the language and intonation.

Most people would suggest that it is good to start an interview with some general types of questions because most people at the beginning of the interview tend to be a little tenser. Therefore, it is good to try and relax the person. Often a good strategy to adopt is to ask more straightforward questions at the beginning.

Photo: RIA Novosti
Vladimir Putin smiles in an interview with
Larry King, American television and radio host.

In order to get the best answer, trust is needed. What is important in building the trust during the interview?

Though sometimes people seem to think that trust is built at the first point of the interview, I think you build trust the moment you first contact the subject. And in some cases it may not even be the elite; it may be their personal assistant or an intermediary of some kind. So, it is important to remember that the trust is established even before the interview takes place.

In the interview there are a number of verbal and non-verbal types of strategies you can adopt. In the case of verbal strategies you can indicate, for example, that the interview will be anonymous or you can be very transparent in your language in terms of what the intent of the research is, what the purposes are and what the outputs will be.

Non-verbal strategies can be very culturally specific. Thus, many Western cultures can practice, for instance, to have good eye contact with the person or to lean forward. The body language should be more open rather than closed. For example, you can have your arms by your side as opposed to have them crossed. It can vary very much from one cultural context to another but those are some examples of verbal and non-verbal types of ways in which you can build trust.

What is the best way to ask sensitive questions?

The first piece of advice I would give is not to necessarily approach those sensitive questions very early in the interview. Better to do this in the middle of the interview, when the person is settled a little bit and you are in a better flow of the interview.

Another approach to this (particularly in the research context) is may be to preface the question with something like: “This is not necessarily a question that I would ask you in a social context but I am going to ask this for professional purposes”.

Another way you might want to do it is to establish with the person ahead that any information they give will be treated either anonymously or confidentially, or in some cases even both. It is really important to establish this very early in the interview.

But even when you do all those things it can still be difficult. Thus, it is important for a researcher to remember that because we have very different agenda to elite subjects, sometimes they won’t be particularly happy or forthcoming in answering some of our questions and that is ok, as it happens in all forms of interactions, whether it is an interview or not.

How would you cope with difficult scenarios?

I have had many of those and that is part of the rational for writing some of the articles that I have on interviewing elites. When you ask tough questions, you might generate some awkward scenarios. In those cases it is very important to maintain your composure as well as professionalism and integrity.

For instance, sometimes you might get an elite subject saying: “What type of questions are those? I am sorry, but that is really inappropriate”. And it is really important to have a good answer for such response explaining why exactly you are interested in that particular question and what you are trying to get out. And that comes back to the point that I made earlier about being frank, open and transparent with the elite subject about the purposes of your research project. At the same time also keep the momentum of the interview and in most cases try to move on fairly quickly without it affecting the performance of the rest of the interview.

How to avoid biased responses?

The most important thing that you need to remember at any stage of an interview is the context. In other words, what angle is the elite coming from when him/her is answering a given question? A researcher always needs to approach any response with a critical mind. It doesn’t necessarily mean being negative but always questioning if the response really makes sense in the context of the interview and their position within their field of expertise.

We should admit that all of us are biased, and that we all have bias in the interview setting as well. That is our world view, our position in any context, but I think if you are not entirely satisfied with the response, then it is ok to probe the person, to ask them different types of questions to clarify that. In research that is known as triangulating evidence. In other words, you are not just asking one question and assuming that is the truth; rather you are trying to get at the same problem or issue from another question, another angle in order to triangulate or verify that piece of information the elite subject is providing.

Mr. Harvey, thank you so much for your insights.