Expert Interview Prep Skill

An hour with a real expert is expensive and perishable — and most of it gets spent badly: fifteen minutes of questions the expert's own writing already answers, a list marched through on schedule while the expert's best tangent dies unfollowed, and notes that resolve to "great conversation." The prep flips the economics: homework raises the starting altitude (the call begins where public knowledge ends), the question arc is designed (calibration → the core unknowns → the frontier questions only this person can answer), and the discipline in the room is follow-up over coverage — the fifth "why" beats the ninth topic.

What This Skill Produces

• The homework brief — what the expert has already said publicly (writing, talks, the searchable record), so no question re-asks it
• The question arc — calibration openers → the core unknowns (ranked, since time will run out) → the only-this-person frontier questions
• The follow-up toolkit — the probes that go deep: "what's an example?", "who disagrees with that and why?", "what would change your mind?"
• The capture plan — recording/notes division, the same-day synthesis, and the repo deposit (research-repo-setup)

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The expert and the occasion — who, their actual expertise edges (experts are spiky — the prep aims at their peaks), and the relationship (a paid analyst call, a courtesy favor, a potential advisor — the register differs)
• The decision the call feeds — what the team will do differently after; questions trace to it or get cut (desk-research-sprint decomposition applies)
• The current belief state — what the team thinks it knows, including the shaky parts; the best expert questions test beliefs, and hidden beliefs can't be tested
• The time box — 30 vs. 60 minutes changes the arc's ambition; both change what gets pre-sent