Employee Knowledge Capture: Interview and Review Template

Set the purpose with the contributor

Explain the task being explored, the intended audience, who will review the output and how the contributor can correct it. Use material that may be shared for this purpose. A confidential HR conversation is not automatically available for training or a company-wide knowledge base.

Interview prompts: follow one real situation

Ask for an example the contributor is authorised to discuss. Keep the account in their terms before drafting a general rule.

• What were you trying to do, and what made this situation difficult?
• Walk through what you did, in order. What information did you need?
• What told you to choose that step rather than another?
• Which tools, access or help made it possible?
• What would make this approach inappropriate or require escalation?
• What did you observe afterwards, and what remains uncertain?
• What could another person inspect to understand or check the account?

Practice card: copy these fields

Keep sensitive details in the authorised source location. The card needs enough context to be useful without reproducing the full conversation.

• Task and audience: who may need this practice and for what work.
• Situation: conditions, tools and relevant constraints.
• Steps: what to do, the decision points and exceptions.
• Rationale: why the contributor chose the approach.
• Evidence: what was described, what was checked and what remains untested.
• Review: contributor correction and process-owner decision, with dates.
• Reuse: intended scope, receiving team and next review trigger.

Review before sharing

Ask the contributor whether the draft is faithful, then ask the process owner whether the proposed use fits current instructions and responsibilities. These are different checks. Look for an example where the practice would fail or need adaptation. Mark unresolved questions visibly instead of turning them into confident instructions.

Test whether another team can use the card

Choose a suitable, approved work example and ask the receiving team to explain the steps and exceptions back in its own words. Observe where the card needs clarification, record local differences and revise it with the owner. Count a card as reviewed or used only under a defined rule; neither status proves a business improvement.

Why this guide is useful

Use this original interview and review template when a useful way of working is difficult to describe in a procedure. The deliverable is a short practice card, not a transcript archive. Invite a contributor because they have relevant experience of the task, not because a system has labelled them a top performer.

Move from an account to a tested practice

NASA’s lessons-learned lifecycle distinguishes collecting, recording, sharing and applying knowledge. This template uses that distinction as a planning aid: collecting a compelling story is only one step. The interview prompts and business example below are original, and a local test still needs an appropriate process owner.

Concrete example

Fictional example: a customer-service adviser explains a checklist for handing unresolved cases to the next shift. The draft card says the checklist prevents missed follow-ups. The reviewer narrows that claim: the checklist records an owner and next action, but no comparison has established its effect on missed follow-ups. Another shift tries the approved version on suitable cases and records what remained unclear before the card is extended.

Sources

• NASA APPEL: the lessons-learned lifecycle