I can’t tell you how to conduct a good interview.

Too much of that depends on your own style and confidence. Also, you’re only half the equation and there’s only so much even the best interviewer can do when asking questions of a reluctant or even hostile individual.

What I can do, though, is pass along five rules that will improve your chances at conducting a good interview. Most of these are drawn directly from the work of John Sawatsky, a Candian investigative journalist who served for years as ESPN’s in-house interview coach. If you follow these rules, you’ll avoid some of the most common mistakes can derail an interview or worse, make it really, really boring.

1. Make sure you’re asking a question.

Sounds stupidly straight forward, doesn’t it? Well, you’d be amazed the number of times an interview subject is not asked a question, but instead instructed to “talk about” such and such.

I know it sounds like I’m nit-picking. I’m not. A question is a request for information from a subject who then can choose whether to answer it or not. Telling the subject to “talk about” something says you’ll take whatever they’re willing to provide, which is absolutely perfect for getting boring summaries and obvious observations.

After 20 years of covering professional athletes, I can say quite definitively that their top priority is to avoid saying anything that will come back to bite them in the ass. Priority No. 2 is concluding the interview as quickly as possible, and if they don’t have to say anything interesting, they generally won’t. Saying, “talk about” such and such is an open invitation for them to say something that is forgettable or obvious.

2. Make sure you ask just one question.

It is truly astounding just how frequently interviewers stack questions one on top of the other and then look expectantly to the subject for the answer, and what I mean by that, is that I was amazed at how frequently I did this once it was pointed out to me.

In a best-case scenario, the result is confusion. The subject must pick which question to answer first. Usually, they’ll opt to tackle the second one, but even that’s a problem because they had started thinking about their answer to the first one and now must change course. Once the subject answers, they may attempt to answer the second question, but this will require them to try and remember it. They will usually fail, but even if they don’t, you have to wait as they recall it, which is awful and unnecessary and just don’t do it.

Ask one question at a time. Wait for the answer. Ask your next question. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

3. Don’t ask a question that can be answered yes or no

These questions tend to start “Did you …” or “Were you …” and while subjects are often good sports, expanding their answer to encompass more than the simplest response, you can’t count on that. Also, the best answers do more than state what happened. They provide an explanation so asking questions that start with “why” or “how” are much more reliable in getting those sort of answers. Also, they can’t be answered with a single word.

For all the times Hollywood has dramatized a reporter asking a subject to confirm or deny a specific fact, the truth is that it’s way more helpful if you’d describe and explain.

4. Simple questions work better than complicated ones

The longer you spend setting up the question, the harder it is for the subject (and the audience) to follow. The more time you spend flexing your expertise, the less room you provide the subject to flex theirs. Simple off-the-shelf questions often produce more compelling answers than intricately worded or overly specific ones.

• What happened?

• How would you characterize that?

• What do you mean?

• What was the turning point?

• What are the options you considered?

5. Keep your questions neutral

Don’t project a value or your opinion. This is something I learned as a newspaper reporter, but even later, when I became a radio host and was encouraged to express opinions, I found that the more of my opinion I allowed to bleed into a question, the more the subject addressed my opinion as opposed to the question. This was true even when I was expressing an opinion that was favorable to the subject. If I was too flattering, they’d try and downplay it. If I expressed a negative opinion regarding an opponent, they’d feel compelled to counterbalance that.

The more colorful your question, the less room you leave for your subject to add to that. Better to ask a plain question so the subject can create an image with their answer.