Interview Guide Validation
I completed a self-administered pilot interview (Interview #0) to validate and refine the interview guide before using it with external practitioners. Several preliminary themes emerged.
The first interview of the practitioner research phase has been completed: a self-administered pilot interview (Interview #0). The purpose of this interview was not to generate findings, but to validate and refine the interview guide before using it with external practitioners.
Purpose
Before interviewing practitioners, I wanted to confirm that the interview guide would surface the types of evidence this research is seeking rather than producing generic descriptions of the BISO role. Conducting a structured pilot interview was the quickest way to identify weaknesses in the guide and understand how participants were likely to respond.
What Changed
The pilot reinforced one important methodological insight. Asking participants to walk through real situations consistently produced richer discussion than asking abstract questions about governance, trust, or decision-making.
As a result, the interview guide has been revised to lead with scenario- and experience-based prompts. Rather than asking participants to describe concepts directly, the revised guide allows those concepts to emerge naturally through discussion of actual events and decisions.
Preliminary Observations
Although this was a single, self-conducted pilot interview, several observations emerged that align with, and in some cases extend, the current working theories documented in the Research Insights artifact.
- The BISO role was consistently framed as facilitating decisions rather than making them.
- Trust was described less as agreement with cybersecurity recommendations and more as confidence that stakeholders would be engaged early and kept informed throughout implementation.
- The way a decision is introduced, communicated, and implemented emerged as a distinct source of value, separate from the quality of the decision itself.
- During high-urgency situations, the role shifted from facilitating decisions toward helping the business execute those decisions effectively. This distinction will be tracked throughout subsequent interviews.
These observations remain preliminary. They represent a single pilot session and will be evaluated alongside evidence gathered from external practitioner interviews rather than treated as confirmed findings.
Next Steps
With the interview guide validated and refined, the research now moves into the external practitioner interview phase. The revised guide will be used for the remaining interviews, and findings will be compared across participants to identify recurring themes, differences, and potential refinements to the emerging theory.