Interview the decision, not your philosophy
To capture judgment missing from your book, choose a specific incident in which you changed your recommendation. Reconstruct what you knew at each point, identify the cue that mattered, and ask what would have changed your decision. Turn the answer into a provisional rule with clear conditions, then check it against another case.
A broad question such as “What makes your approach different?” may produce a polished explanation of your method. It may not reveal the small distinctions you use when someone brings you an actual problem. Those distinctions are what an author skill needs when the obvious advice is wrong for the situation.
You can begin alone with a recording or written notes. A colleague can help by asking follow-up questions when your answer becomes vague. Neither approach captures all expertise in a session; the useful output is a set of specific decisions you can examine.
Notice what has become obvious to you
In a discussion about experts forgetting what beginners know, u/Fermifighter described explaining an area they had worked in:
“I have to periodically be reminded that most people do not in fact know the formula for quartz.”
The surrounding comment concerns their experience discussing eyewear and uses a comic reference. It is a personal illustration of assumed background knowledge, not a research finding about expertise. Original comment.
Another participant, u/Capolan, described an intentional practice:
“I got in the habit a long time ago of really trying to understand WHY I'm good at things.”
The commenter goes on to discuss examining actions and signals. Their claims about teaching outcomes are self-reported; the useful prompt for an author is to investigate the reasons behind a decision. Original comment.
Your book may already contain the general rule while leaving these reasons implicit. Look for phrases such as “when appropriate,” “use your judgment,” or “choose the best option.” Each is a place to ask what you actually notice before choosing.
Choose an incident with a real decision point
Pick a situation you remember clearly enough to separate facts from reconstruction. Useful candidates include a reader who misunderstood an exercise, a workshop moment when you abandoned the planned next step, or a case where your usual recommendation would have made things worse.
Prefer an incident with materials you can consult: an anonymized draft, your own notes, or a version history. Use only material you have permission to use. You do not need names, identifying details, or private correspondence to capture the decision structure.
Record the outcome, but begin the reconstruction before you knew it. Otherwise, it is easy to tell a story in which every clue pointed neatly toward the eventual result. Write “I do not remember” where needed. A missing memory is more useful than a confident invented explanation.
The Critical Decision Method is an established interview approach that uses probes to explore how experts make decisions. AHRQ's description also cautions that interviewer skill and participant quality affect the information elicited. The worksheet here is a practical authoring aid inspired by incident-focused inquiry, not a substitute for a trained analysis or a validated implementation of that method. AHRQ method description.
Use this recording sheet
Put the incident name, date of the interview, and source materials at the top. If you record audio, keep time markers beside important answers so you can check the original wording later.
| Interview question | What to capture |
|---|---|
| What was the person trying to achieve? | The actual task and constraints, not your summary of their personality |
| What did you know before intervening? | Facts available then; separate later discoveries |
| What first made you question the obvious next step? | A word, omission, inconsistency, or concrete observation |
| What alternatives did you consider? | At least one plausible action you did not choose |
| Why did you reject that alternative? | The condition that made it unsuitable |
| What did you ask or inspect next? | The missing evidence you needed |
| What would a less experienced practitioner have missed? | A possible error, without pretending all novices make it |
| What small change in the facts would change your advice? | A counterexample or boundary |
| Which part is still hard to explain? | Judgment requiring more examples, observation, or human review |
Answer in ordinary language first. Do not try to write perfect instructions while remembering the incident. Keep the recording, your interpretation, and the proposed rule as separate records.
After the first pass, choose one decision and revisit it. “The draft felt unfocused” is not yet a usable cue. Ask which sentence, contradiction, or missing fact produced that impression. “I wanted to be helpful” describes your intention, not the decision rule.
Worked example: the question beneath a workshop exercise
Imagine a fictional author whose book teaches small teams to design useful internal workshops. The published exercise says to write a learning objective, choose an activity, and plan a short debrief.
In the invented incident below, the author stops a participant from designing the activity. All interview answers and outputs are illustrative; there was no recorded interview or reader trial.
Initial answer: “I could tell they weren't ready to choose an exercise.”
That answer names a judgment without explaining it. A follow-up asks what the author noticed.
More specific answer: “They said the workshop should improve collaboration, but they could not name anything participants should be able to do afterward. Then they suggested a debate because it would be lively.”
Now there are observable cues: a broad ambition, no intended action, and an activity selected for energy rather than purpose. A second follow-up asks why the author did not simply suggest a better activity.
Decision explanation: “Any activity I proposed would hide the unresolved objective. I asked for one situation in which the team needed to collaborate differently. They described handing work from one shift to another.”
A final probe asks what would have changed the recommendation.
Counterexample: “If they already had a specific objective, such as identifying missing handoff information, I would not restart the entire objective exercise. I'd check whether the proposed activity gave people a chance to practice that action.”
The interview has uncovered a condition and an exception. The rule is more useful than “always begin by defining objectives,” because it distinguishes a missing objective from an objective already clear enough to use.
Turn the answer into a provisional rule
Keep the transformation visible so you can challenge your interpretation:
| Element | Draft rule for this fictional method |
|---|---|
| Trigger | Reader asks for a workshop activity but names only a broad outcome such as collaboration |
| Check | Ask what participants should do differently in a concrete work situation |
| Reason | Activity selection depends on the intended action |
| Action | Help specify that action before proposing activities |
| Exception | If a concrete action is already supplied, confirm it and assess the activity against it |
| Boundary | Do not invent the team's actual workflow or claim the workshop will change behavior |
| Evidence status | Proposed author rule derived from an illustrative interview; untested |
The rule should point back to its supporting material. For a real interview, include the recording time marker or note location and mark whether the author approved the interpretation.
Avoid changing “I asked in this case” into “always ask” without examining other cases. One incident can reveal a useful hypothesis about your judgment. It cannot establish that the same rule fits every reader.
Challenge the rule with a contrasting case
Try the rule on a reader who arrives with the statement: “After the session, participants should be able to identify three missing fields in a shift handoff.” They ask for an activity.
Under the proposed rule, the skill should assess the supplied objective and ask about practical constraints needed for the activity. It should not automatically demand another abstract discussion about collaboration.
Now remove the intended action and keep only “make the team more collaborative.” The missing-objective branch should become relevant. These are authored expectations, not reports of model behavior.
A third case might expose a boundary: the reader wants the skill to diagnose why colleagues distrust one another. The workshop method does not provide enough evidence for that diagnosis. Capture the limitation rather than extending the rule to cover a problem the book does not resolve.
If every case produces the same recommendation, ask whether your rule records an actual distinction or merely restates a slogan. If the cases feel indistinguishable, return to the interview and ask for another concrete contrast.
Keep unresolved judgment out in the open
Some answers will remain “I know it when I see it.” Do not translate that into an instruction for AI to use the author's intuition. Collect examples of what you saw, annotate differences, and identify the parts you can and cannot make explicit.
You may discover that a task requires observing a live interaction, inspecting materials the reader cannot share, or making a decision you do not want delegated. That is a reason to narrow the skill or define a human review boundary.
Keep an unresolved list with the decision, why it remains unclear, and what evidence might help. A second incident, an observed demonstration, or a conversation with another practitioner may be more useful than another abstract interview question.
Move from interview notes to a testable skill
Finish with a small set of author-approved rules, each linked to an incident and a contrasting case. Retain the difference between what you recalled, what you inferred, and what you have actually tested.
The guide to creating an agent skill covers turning a bounded process into instructions. Before relying on those instructions, run the contrasting cases and inspect whether the actual behavior follows the conditions you intended.
To discuss a skill built around your method, bring one completed interview sheet and the rule it produced to Skillfully. Choose Book onboarding with the difficult decision, its exception, and any unresolved judgment ready to review.