Don’t Let Wisdom Walk Away: The Hidden Art of Knowledge Interviews

Every organization has been there; that moment when a key employee moves on, and suddenly we realize how much of their knowledge existed only in their head. It’s not just about losing a team member, it’s about losing the shortcuts, insights, and quiet expertise that made them such an effective member of the team.

Knowledge interviews can soften the loss. Done right, they don’t just preserve what someone knows, but also strengthen culture, boost collaboration, and turn the potential casualty into a key opportunity for growth.

Capturing Tacit Knowledge and Individual Expertise

When a respected colleague or top performer leaves (or even moves internally), the risk is not just the vacancy, but the quiet exodus of their accumulated wisdom. That wisdom is often tacit. According to Gartner Group, tacit knowledge is defined as what an individual holds in mind (skills, intuition, judgement) rather than formal documented content. It’s the stuff that has been learned through doing, and shaped by intuition, relationships, and experience…but because it lives in people’s heads, it is incredibly vulnerable to being lost. Estimates vary, but one source puts the share of organizational knowledge in tacit form as high as 80 % , leaving only a sliver in explicit documents.

From this perspective, knowledge interviews become the mechanism for catalysing work conversations between leaders/HR and employees.

The key is to ask open-ended, reflective questions, capturing not just the ‘what’ but the ‘how’ and ‘why’. By conducting these interviews, employers can make tacit knowledge explicit, allowing them to effectively capture the precious knowledge that otherwise evaporates with employee movement. In this context, a knowledge interview is part of the internal offboarding or transition process, making it a deliberate and purposeful hand-over of relevant expertise.

Speaking of Relevant Expertise…

Knowledge interviews are designed to help employers capture the elusive yet important data that can enable future employees. But be aware that the act of actually recording all this data can open another can of worms, and inside that can is ROT data.

‘ROT’ stands for Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial data, and this is the mountain of information organizations accumulate over time that may no longer actually serve them. One study by BigID suggest that up to 80 % of enterprise information may fall into ROT territory, which is a huge amount of data that is taking up space where more valuable and relevant knowledge could be stored.

While employers should seek to capture valuable knowledge, they must also be intentional to avoid adding to the clutter. An over-grown repository of captured interviews, outdated documents and unmanaged files may become part of the ROT problem itself, resulting in employees spending time digging through noise rather than finding signal. If you decide to start capturing knowledge through interviews, this is also the time to conduct a data clean-up to ensure employees can easily find the critical knowledge.

Final Takeaways

As we continue to navigate dynamic work environments, hybrid models, and increasing mobility, the potential for knowledge loss grows exponentially. However, through well-designed knowledge interviews embedded in off-boarding and transition processes, employers can safeguard what makes their teams unique and effective.

By intentionally capturing tacit knowledge, reframing departure as a chance to preserve expertise, and keeping the knowledge ecosystem clean of ROT, organizations turn human capital into a sustainable, durable asset.

If you would like to discuss how we can help offer services to clear out that ROT and embed knowledge interviews into your offboarding process, please get in touch with me at amanda@orgshakers.com