Can we show all our cards in an interview?

I've read thousands of resumes. I've sat across the table (or the Zoom screen) for hundreds of interviews. I have a good eye for talent, and I know how to ask a question that actually gets at something real.

And I am not good at interviewing for myself.

I'd love to tell you that it’s changed with experience. It hasn't. Ask me a tough question on the spot, and you'll watch me think out loud, circling, backtracking, testing an idea before I commit to it, until I eventually land somewhere solid. Eventually, being the operative word.

What “bad at interviewing” actually looks like

Here's the thing: it's not that I don't know the answer. It's that I need time to find the good version of it.

I am, through and through, a think-to-speak processor. Give me a meaty question, and my first instinct isn't to answer; it's to sit with it. I've said some version of "you've given me a lot to consider, let me take this away and think about it" more times than I can count, in meetings, in negotiations, in conversations that had nothing to do with interviewing at all. It's just how I'm built. Maybe I process slowly. Maybe my expectations of my own answers are just unreasonably high. Either way, the gap between "I have thoughts on this" and "I can say those thoughts out loud, in order, right now" is real, and it doesn't close under pressure. If anything, it widens.

So when I'm on the other side of an interview (the one being asked, not the one asking) that gap is exactly what shows up. Not a lack of expertise. A lack of time

What interviews are actually measuring

Here's where my professional hat comes back on. After conducting hundreds of interviews, I've started to wonder how much of what we're actually assessing in a live, unprepared interview is job-relevant at all.

We tell ourselves we're measuring competence. But a lot of the time, we're measuring composure under an artificial kind of pressure, one that rarely exists in the actual job. Polish under a spotlight. Comfort with being watched while you think. Verbal quickness, which is a real skill, but not the same skill as being good at the job.

For roles where quick, live thinking genuinely is the job (think crisis response, live client-facing negotiation, some sales contexts) that pressure test has real value. It tells you something true. But for a huge number of roles, it doesn't. It just filters for a particular cognitive style and quietly screens out people who think differently, regardless of how capable they actually are.

The case for sharing questions in advance

So here's my honest question, as both a candidate and a hiring professional: what's the harm in sharing interview questions ahead of time?

The usual objection is that it lets people "give a rehearsed answer" instead of a genuine one. I'd push back on that. A prepared answer isn't a fake one; it’s often the more honest version because it's had time to become the answer someone actually means, rather than the first thing that fell out of their mouth under stress. We don't ask people to write reports on the spot, unedited, and call that their real writing ability. Why do we treat unprepared, real-time speech as someone's most authentic self?

Giving questions in advance doesn't mean giving away the job. It means giving every candidate (the quick processors and the slow ones) a fair shot at showing you their actual thinking, not just their thinking under a clock.

Where I land

I don't think the answer is to throw out live interviews altogether, for some roles, that real-time read is genuinely useful information. But I do think we've built a process that quietly rewards one type of brain over another, and called it "objective" for a lot longer than it deserves.

So I'll ask you: should more organizations be sharing interview questions in advance? And if the answer is "it depends", what does it actually depend on?

I'd love to hear where you land.