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Conduct Interviews - Basics
R
Written by Radha Saikia
Updated over a month ago

To start a documentation review at a site select Gather Evidence and then Conduct Interviews in the navigation menu

The Content Page on the right lists a table containing all the sites that must be visited during the audit and the job roles that must be interviewed at each visited site. Each table cell contains a fraction showing how many interviews have been completed relative to the recommended number of interviews for a specific role at each visited site.

To start your first interview click on the role cell in the table that corresponds to the site where the interviewee is located.

Interview is intended to be anonymous and you should only identify the interviewee by title. The Title field at the top of the page is optional, but is useful for distinguishing between responses from interviewees with the same role and that work at the same site.

The audit questions listed on the Content page are only those that require a response from the selected interviewee Role and all other questions are excluded from the question listing. You can change question lists by changing the Role of the interviewee.

IMPORTANT: Remember, when you are conducting interviews, you are verifying that the system you are auditing is understood by the employees of the business. The best way to do that is through a conversation about policies and procedures, and how employees implement them in their daily activities. To assist you with this the question may includes sample questions.

Expanding the question by clicking on the More link will reveal the question instructions and if provided by the protocol this will including suggested sample questions that can be used as conversation starters. They assist you in determining the employee’s understanding of the content. The conversation that follows helps determine the interviewee’s response to the question.

Based on the employee’s response, summarize your confidential Comments in point form. In this section you are just gathering information, not writing the final report. The comments you add here do not show up in the final audit report, but they can be referenced when deciding what suggestions to make, or what to follow up on during the site observation tour.

The Comments you enter also appear every time you conduct an interview, so you can collect all your comments about a question in one place, making it easier for you to speak to specifics when you’re completing your findings (see 1 below).

Next to the comments, select the appropriate Response that you received from the employee (see 2 above). There are four options:

  1. Positive,

  2. Negative,

  3. No Comment – this is treated in the same manner as “negative”, and;

  4. Not Asked – Always check with your certifying partner or certification body before skipping questions. As a general rule, all questions must be asked to all interviewees, but there may be exceptions.

IMPORTANT: The Question is not applicable checkbox (see below) is used to remove question from the entire audit. It is equivalent to marking a question as not applicable on in the Audit Results section.

When the interview is complete, click Done to return to the summary page. Notice that the interview table is updated accordingly.

Articles for Interviews:

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