The Callback Question
Launch library · evergreen read
Returning to something said twenty minutes earlier, and asking the subject to connect it to what they have just said, does two things at once: it proves the interviewer was listening from the start, and it often surfaces a contradiction or a deepening that neither party had noticed in the moment.
The callback works best when it is precise. A vague reference to something mentioned earlier invites confusion, while quoting the earlier phrase back almost exactly gives the subject a solid handle to hold and respond to, and shows a level of attention that tends to earn a more considered answer in return.
Some of the strongest material in a long interview comes from these connective questions rather than from any single prompt in isolation. They ask a subject to do the work of synthesis themselves, and the synthesis a person produces about their own words is usually more honest than any summary offered to them.