Customers & Research

What are the questions that quietly ruin an interview by leading the person to the answer I want?

A starting point

The killers are hypotheticals and pitches disguised as questions: "Would you use an app that...", "Don't you hate it when...", "How much would you pay for...". They all invite a polite fantasy answer. As a starting point, replace every one with a question about the past: what they actually did, when, and what it cost them, because memory of real behavior is far harder to fake than a guess about the future.

Go deeper

Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time.

2 resources 2 link-checked

Read

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it This is the cleanest, most concrete catalogue of the exact question shapes that quietly steer a person to the answer you already want. It names five specific traps (rephrasing what you think you saw, assuming a problem and blaming the user, suggesting the answer, naming interface elements the user never used, and assuming their emotions) and gives a neutral rewrite for each, so you can pattern-match your own script before an interview. It stays practical rather than academic, which is the right altitude when you are about to sit across from a real customer.

Avoid Leading Questions to Get Better Insights from Participants

From Nielsen Norman Group by Amy Schade about 7 min read

  • Leading questions bury the answer you want inside the question, so people mirror your words instead of telling you what actually happened.
  • The fixes are specific: swap suggested outcomes ("how well did this save you time?") for open ones ("what was easy or hard about this?"), and never name a feature the user has not named first.
  • Watch for questions that assume an emotion or a problem ("when you were struggling..."), because they quietly plant a reality that may not be true for that person.
Open nngroup.com →
📖 Book
✓ Link checked Paid Beginner

Why we picked it The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past behaviour, not your idea, so you can't be lied to. If a founder reads one thing before talking to a single customer, it's this.

The Mom Test

From momtestbook.com by Rob Fitzpatrick ~130 pages

  • Talk about their life, not your idea.
  • Ask about specifics in the past, not opinions about the future.
  • 'That's so cool, I'd totally buy it' is a compliment, not data, dig for commitment and evidence.
Open momtestbook.com →

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