It’s also good to, in preparation, ask yourself “what if s/he says yes” and “what if s/he says no,” etc. for each of your questions. Don’t assume the answer you’re expecting will come.

And also keep “can you clarify”", “why?”, and similar questions in your pocket. If you can’t come up with anything more specific, it may still get you the information you need.

“Will you have to cut the city’s budget for landscaping?”

or

“Are you going to cancel the school’s prom because of this incident?”

or

“Will this mean that the city will go into debt?

or

“Were you arrested for driving under the influence?”

Often, people–particularly in sensitive matters–try to wiggle out of answering questions, and sometimes you just have to ask, flat-out, for a yes-or-no answer. Then you can ask the follow-ups. That still allows the interviewee to expound and yield those nuggets of gold that Scott alluded to.

Using your example — and ignoring the fact a real politician can make a mountain range out of a molehill (i.e., they’re physically incapable of saying yes or no to the media) — instead of saying “Do you…”, would it not serve the same purpose to say, “Why don’t you…” and let the politico expand on it? You’re able to follow up with the other questions if you need to, and you’ve used one less back-and-forth to reach the same place. Longer answers almost always yield nuggets of article gold.

In the beginning I wrote that it is best NOT to ask yes/no questions, however, there are times when these types of questions come up or as I point out are helpful because they can lead down another or specific path. Also, especially when dealing with politics and particularly this example’s situation, the question isn’t biased toward a positive response because I stated we are interviewing the opposition to the new budget. It is assumed that the one who proposed the budget obviously thinks it is a positive/best case scenario.

So to get specific, you could ask, “Do you think the new budget will positively impact the city as the mayor suggested in his speech?” This gives the opposition the opportunity to say “no, yada, yada” as opposed to assuming that because they are the opposition/opposition party they are opposed the new budget in it’s entirety or disagree with the impact which is where the bias would would adversely impact the line of questioning. They could agree with the budget’s positive impact, but disagree with the way the budget was proposed or the level of positive impact implied by the mayor, or items within the budget or feel there is another way to get the same impact without certain elements i.e. taxes, etc. This line of questioning gives them the opportunity to level their exact opinion without any assumptions on the interviewer’s part.

Rather than: “Do you think the new budget will positively impact the city?”

Ask “How do you think the new budget will impact the city?”

Another problem with the question as initially posed is that it is biased toward a positive response (interviewing 101).