The real role of the interviewer — and how I got it all wrong

Interviewing isn’t what you think. It’s leadership.

I’d be so thrilled if you’d make me smile! Just hit the ❤️ button at the top or bottom of this email. I’ll know I’ve made a friend and you’ll help others find Sound Judgment.

Hi storytellers – 

Lately, I’ve been plagued by a recurring memory of an interview I did several years ago. 

I was working for Colorado Public Radio on the station’s daily public affairs show. The  opportunity arose to talk with a renowned medical ethicist, a practicing physician who was also, I would come to learn, a former Shakespearean actor.

The University of Colorado had wooed Matt Wynia away from his longtime post as the American Medical Association’s lead ethicist to run what I thought was a mystifying, and fascinating, organization: the university’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities. 

There, Matt would lead studies of our most pressing ethical, life-and-death dilemmas. He’d also be in charge of faculty for whom the humanity of medicine is as important, if not more so, than the roles of biology, technology,…