It isn’t very often I get asked to supply questions ahead of time when conducting an interview but when I do unless there is a good reason otherwise I will not do it.
If there is a good reason like in the case of a Rising Stars interview with Allison Daniels for the program I do at the station I work for, where she is from Quebec City and English is her second language and she was still very much learning it at the time, it would be of great importance for her to the questions to be able to respond properly in English. Outside of situations where it is imperative, I do not like supplying the questions because my interviews traditionally do not follow a script or I do not want them to. It also takes out the conversation element of the interview that I love and people like. Also with them having any scripted questions it allows the subject to have carefully choreographed answers that may not be the actual answers to the intended questions, and becomes rather an ask and answer rather than a conversation. I don’t do magazine style interviews where there are just set questions and little follow up. The Rising Stars interviews tend to be more scripted as to having a structure to accomplish what I need in a shorter period of time than say when I did the podcast where those could be as short or as long as I required.
I like the subject of the interview to have an idea of the questions being asked, which I can give a generality of the interview, but as a whole unless a valid reason is present giving them direct and exact questions ahead of time isn’t something I will do.
– Everett
