«Lots of professionals think they avoid leading questions when wanting to uncover people's actual knowledge, thoughts and feelings. Clean Language Interviewing is a game-changer because it spells out why you might be mistaken about the quality of your questioning, and how you might be unintentionally skewing the information you gather. It demonstrates how to upgrade your approach so that the decisions you make are based on a much stronger foundation. Essential reading for anyone who gathers information through conversations.»

Judy Rees, Partner Rees McCann, UK.

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Gathering insight from people and not only data is essential to understanding the business performance. Yet the way that questions are framed is often highly leading, which constrains the ability to gather insight. This book on clean language interviewing describes the principles and practices of asking questions with minimal assumptions that can support business leaders to gain relevant information.

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Natasha Sandoval, Senior Vice President Marketing, Scandit, Switzerland.

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When reading my post graduate students’ transcripts of their qualitative research semi-structured interviews, I noticed that they paraphrase the participants’ words into their own. This bothered me and when Prof. Heather Cairns-Lee introduced me to “Clean Language” interviewing, I was delighted. This book comes for me at an opportune time as it offers a solution to the problem I identified in the credibility of our qualitative research. We realise that qualitative research studies rarely found space in our high level journals in Management and Leadership studies, unless, as a colleague of mine described it – the methodology and findings “are glowing in the dark”. I think that this book on “Clean Language” would offer us as qualitative researchers practical guidelines on securing a home for our research output in highly respected journals. As an executive coach, I was struck by the enormous potential of this work on “Clean Language” to augment our coaching mindset on non-directive facilitation of growth of our clients. Prof. Heather Cairns-Lee’s work on metaphors to crystalise leadership identity, using clean language, offers “how to” practical guidelines for executive coaches and I am inspired to use it in my work, and confident that other coaches would find it useful too. Congratulations on the publication of this relevant and rigorous work on “Clean Language”. We are grateful for your contribution to enhance the credibility of our qualitative research and coaching practice.

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Professor Caren Brenda Scheepers, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Sout

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If you gather information through interviews, put this book on your must-read list. Packed with insights from a collaboration of top experts around the world, this text is a treasure of guidance to improve the competency for cleaning the interview of the interviewer’s assumptions, frames, and worldviews. Thanks to these authors, my clean interviewing competency increased in a range of academic and organization practice interview applications including exemplar modelling, evaluation, recruitment, specification, and phenomenological interviews.

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Pamela Ey, Adjunct Professor at McColl School of Business at Queens University in Charlotte, North C

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Asking good questions is an art which we should never take for granted. This thought-provoking book helps us develop our skills by inviting us to understand the experiences of others in their words, without judgment. A must read for any researcher or practitioner.

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Professor Almuth McDowall, Assistant Dean, Department of Organisational Psychology, Birbeck Universi

«Clean Language Interviewing offers a unique, powerful, and insightful method of conducting interviews that keeps your stuff out and gathers their stuff in. This is the most useful and available training for investigatory interviewing I have come across in my career.»

Dick Swanson President at Performance Management Initiatives Inc., USA.

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I see a growing usefulness of Clean Language Interviewing in the business world, especially as leadership practices evolve for the digital age. We introduced Clean Language into our company two years ago to increase collaboration. Then we saw its benefits in detecting and managing conflicts. Now, we are taking the next step in the use of Clean Language Interviewing: uncovering hidden assumptions. Without bringing out hidden assumptions into the open, we are missing out on "people-data" important to assure project success.

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Shail Jai, Chief Executive Officer & Cofounder, Farragut Inc., USA.

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Being able to conduct interviews as effectively as possible is a vital skill in ‘the interview society’. This accessible and ground-breaking book supports practitioners and academics to minimise their assumptions to produce authentic data from interviewees when it is important to do so.

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Tawfik Jelassi, Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD, Switzerland.

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If you are a qualitative researcher, or curious about how to conduct interviews in a variety of contexts, you will be intrigued by this book. Starting with an introduction to the epistemological foundations of clean language, each chapter examines how clean language principles can help interviewers gain deep insights into individuals’ experiences. Even if you are an experienced interviewer or researcher, you will find yourself returning to this book to learn more about how clean language can help you approach interviews in a qualitatively distinct way.

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Carole Elliott, Professor of Organisation Studies, Sheffield University Management School, UK.

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This book reminds us that the most useful data for a variety of purposes including research, diagnosis or evaluation are, as much as possible, untainted by external categories and schemas. What sociologists call first order perceptions can be accessed through the clean language interviewing approach described here. Interventions or other types of initiatives based on such an approach are more likely to hit the mark since they are informed by valid data and understandings.

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Loizos Heracleous Professor of Strategy and Organisation, Warwick Business School, UK.

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This accessible clearly written edited volume details and explains the principles, methods, and application of clean language interviewing. It offers both a detailed understanding of the method and its applications across a wide range of research settings. Theoretically grounded and practically relevant this book should be essential for all those using interviews in their research and practice.

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Mark NK Saunders, Professor of Business Research Methods, University of Birmingham Business School,

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Clean Language Interviewing is a learnable skill that can help with truly listening such that people feel heard, and establishing authentic connection. There is no better predictor of outcome in therapy than the relationship between the therapist and client – using Clean Language interviewing can help establish this critical connection. In the world of safety, where incident investigations tend to mimic courtrooms (without the necessary checks and balances), Clean Language can begin to make a real difference – changing the way data is collected. If interviews can be done using Clean Language in an investigation process, we have a game changer – we will learn far more than we ever have about how work is actually done, because we will truly listen and be aware of how our presence as an interviewer can influence the outcome of the interview. I feel this is the way forward – there is a massive move towards authenticity and genuine connection that Clean Language interviewing can support.

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Tanya Hewett, Ph.D. Owner of Beyond Safety Compliance, USA.