Interview your CEO well: a question bank

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

A CEO interview goes well when the questions are easy to answer out loud. Most go wrong because the questions were written for a brochure, and the answers come back in the same tone. The question bank below uses plain prompts that ask for a story, and the method sets the interviewer up to listen.

Two habits before the questions

Use names. Use the CEO's name, the names of the people in the story and the interviewer's name, because a conversation with names in it sounds like a conversation. Talk with the room, not at it. The CEO should be answering a person, not reciting to a camera or a board.

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Question themes

Where it started

• What did you see that other people missed when you started?
• Who gave you the first real chance, and what did they say?

A decision that did not work

• Tell me about a decision you would make differently now.
• What did you notice first that told you it was going wrong?

The team

• Who on the team would be most surprised by what you just said about them, and why?
• What do you ask a new hire to do in their first month?

The customer

• Describe a customer you think about often. What did they need?
• What do they say when they come back?

Advice

• What would you tell someone starting a business like this one?
• What do you still get wrong?

How to run it

1. Choose three themes for the piece you are making.
2. Pick five or six questions across them, and write one follow-up for each.
3. Start with one or two easy questions you do not plan to use, so the first answer that matters is not the stiffest.
4. Ask the first real question and then listen. Follow the answer, and come back to the list only for the places you still need.
5. Ask for the answer in one sentence at the end, and keep the version you like best.

A worked example

A fictional furniture maker, Harrow and Vane, is making a short film about its founder, Helen. The interviewer asks, "Where did it start?" Helen starts with a workshop that was too cold to use in winter. The follow-up is, "What was the first piece you were proud of?" That opens a story about a table she sold to a neighbour and then rebuilt. The interview then moves to the decision that did not work, and the story is in the film because it is hers.

Common mistakes

• Closed questions. "Are you proud of the team?" gets a yes, and the interview stops.
• Reading the list aloud, so each answer sounds like the start of the next question.
• Forty questions. Five answers that land are worth more than twenty skimmed.
• Questions about the product only, which end with a sales line.
• Skipping the warm-up, so the first answer, which is usually the stiffest, is the one that gets cut.

Before the camera

A CEO who has never been filmed benefits from a session before the day. Granary's media training day covers the camera, the room and the difficult question. What happens in media training explains the session step by step. For the photographs that usually go with the film, team headshot day, how to organise it is the companion guide, and testimonial videos, how to get customers to say yes covers the customer side of the same story.

Related guides

• LinkedIn profile photos: what works at a small size
• Team headshot day: how to get fifteen people photographed and matching
• Testimonial videos: how to get customers to say yes
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.