a good interview question

A colleague recently introduced me to this clever idea. If you’re interviewing someone for [role], it can be useful to ask them this hypothetical question:

“A good friend of yours is about to hire a [role] at their organization. They come and ask you how to know if they’ve gotten a good [role]. What do you tell them?”

This can reveal otherwise hidden priorities and values. It can gently push someone out of the tricky, game-theoretic position they rationally sit in for all questions that are about them and their past performance. This question is less obviously about looking good and more about articulating a line of thinking. You might get some signal that’s less noisy than the rest of the interview. 

-Eric