Question set that works
Ask about performance, not content.
- What should people be doing differently?
- How will you know it worked?
- What do top performers do that others don't?
- What mistakes do you see most often?
- What have you already tried?
Journey dashboard
Day 23 / 60Week 3 · Performance ConsultingLesson
Stakeholder & SME interviews
Learning goal
Run an interview that produces decisions, not a content dump.
Estimated time
30 minutes · self-paced
Warm-up
What happens when you open with 'so what should the course cover?'
Main lesson
Managing the expert
exampleSMEs suffer from the curse of knowledge; they forget what is hard. Ask for stories and real examples of failure — that's where the training gold is.
Close with agreement
End every interview with a written summary and one decision confirmed.
Examples from practice
- — An interview surfacing that most errors happen only in the end-of-month rush.
Interactive quiz
Reflection
Which question would you find hardest to ask a senior stakeholder?
Daily challenge
Run a 20-minute interview with anyone who does a job you don't understand.
Portfolio task
Add an anonymised interview summary to Project 3.
AI design tools
Ten assistants for this lesson
AI Mentor
Instructional design questions only
Hi! I'm your ID Mentor. Ask me anything about stakeholder & sme interviews — or instructional design in general.