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Envisioning Your Retention Strategy 49

responses to the classic exit interview question “Why are
you leaving?” somewhat suspect.
If you choose to conduct an exit interview, don’t ask that old
question, “Why are you leaving?” Even if your departing
employees tell the truth (and most come prepared with a stan-
dard, bland response), you still won’t get the answers you want.
Instead, ask, “Why didn’t you stay?”
This question may seem semantically similar, but it’s cru-
cially different. For one thing, it deflects the prepared, standard
response. But, more important, it changes the focus of the
employee’s answer.
What can you do to get more useful information from exit
interviews? Here are a few tips.
Have the Interviews Facilitated Externally
No matter how good you think you are at interviewing, for all
the reasons detailed above you will not get reliable information
from exit interviews—even if HR or staff from other functional
departments do the interviews. Your departing employee will
still assume that the information will come back to you, as his
or her former manager.
To improve the quality of information garnered from exit
interviews, get someone external to the organization to conduct

Why Are You Leaving?” vs.
“Why Didn’t You Stay?”
Ask Joe Leaver,“Why are you leaving?” He thinks long,
decides to tell the truth,drops his prepared response,gulps,and says,
“My manager was a bully.”
Is that what you really need to know? You may think so. However,
let’s say you ask,“Well,accepting that,why didn’t you stay?” Joe thinks
harder,then says,“I guess it’s because when I complained about my
manager’s bullying,nobody did anything about it. I’m a big guy. I could
take the petty bullying.What I couldn’t take was the company’s apathy
about it.”
Do you see the difference? “Why are you leaving?” will uncover the ail-
ment.“Why didn’t you stay?” uncovers the cure you need to implement.