In August, I was preparing for a moderator role at Fastmarkets’ European Battery Raw Materials Conference. It brought a question into focus: what does the person asking the questions owe the people answering them?
A moderator cannot substitute for every specialist on a panel. But preparation still matters. The work is to understand enough to recognise a meaningful disagreement, ask for a concrete example, and notice when an answer has left the original question behind.
The circle of competence is useful here. Knowing the boundary of my knowledge does not mean remaining silent outside it. It means asking questions in a way that does not pretend the boundary is elsewhere.
There are questions that display the interviewer’s preparation, and questions that help the audience understand something. Sometimes they overlap. I would like the second to be the priority.
A useful experiment
Prepare three types of questions: one that establishes the problem, one that exposes a trade-off, and one that tests an answer against a real decision. Keep a follow-up ready: “What would that look like in practice?”
Question still open
How can a host make a technical conversation accessible while preserving the complexity that makes it worth having?