Breaking the CEO Script

By Jeff Bailey
February 5, 2009 03:33 PM

Watching the presidential debates last year, the candidates seemed to me to agree on only one thing: they wouldn’t be answering any questions. It didn’t seem to matter who the moderator was, or whether the question came from a citizen. The candidates treated each inquiry as if they’d been asked, “Do you have some talking points, on a favorite issue perhaps, that you’d care to repeat for the thousandth time?”

It was maddening as a voter. And for us business reporters there was also a sense of déjà vu, because corporate CEOs have increasingly adopted the same approach to handling questions. And not just in press conferences and on quarterly conference calls. More and more executives, even in one-on-one interviews, are attempting to bypass direct questions and then spew their preferred message.

This has been going on for at least 30 years. “It began to manifest itself, in a more pervasive way, in the late 1970s and then in the Reagan presidency,” says Philip Angell, an environmental and communications consultant who served as chief of staff to EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus during the Reagan years. “You had a stage-managed presidency.” And then, Angell notes, “Private sector people took that discipline into the business sector.”

It’s nothing new, but the problem has spread in recent years and is a serious impediment to reporting. Reporters need to take charge to avoid walking out of a session with a CEO with nothing but warmed-over slop -- the sort of stuff one can get from the transcript of the executive’s latest conference call.

First, we all need to recognize -- and not be afraid to confront the executive about it – that he or she has had media training. The key words from that training are acknowledge, meaning make some effort to indicate you heard the reporter’s question; and bridge, meaning quickly change the subject to something you want to talk about. Then, for all intents and purposes, the executive has been assured by some public relations operative that he or she will be free to blither on about the company’s brilliant strategy, even if you’re trying to ask about workplace accidents or ugly labor problems. Plug those two words into Google, along with media training, and you’ll get countless hits linking to advice on how to avoid answering questions, like this one from a San Diego PR firm.

If you’re getting the acknowledge-bridge-spew treatment, I recommend a four-part plan to deal with it. 1.) Repeat the question and explicitly state that you’re repeating it. This politely gives the CEO a chance to cease with the spewing. 2.) If the spewing persists, hear it out and then state something to the effect of, “Golly, it sounds like you have a message you want to deliver. Fire away. I’m all ears. Then we’ll get back to my questions.” 3.) If the next question is also dodged, then it’s time to say, “No offense, Mr. Scripted. You’ve obviously had some media training. Acknowledge. Bridge. Huh? And I know it really works great in front of crowds and on television. But we’re just here with my notebook and I really am interested in getting you to answer these questions.” 4.)  If that doesn’t work, or if you get thrown out of the office, it’s worth asking others who know the CEO if he/she ever listens; an executive with the send button stuck down, so to speak, is a danger to shareholders and others.

My advice may seem to contradict an earlier BusinessJournalism.org piece I wrote on interviewing. But the approach I am writing about now is for when the witness is a bit hostile. Clearly, if a CEO is game to answer your questions, ask big ones and sit back and let him or her talk.

Asking the right questions can help head off a spewing session, too. If you lapse into lazy questioning – Why are you doing this deal? Are you going to make your projection for the quarter? Is that new product going to disappoint you on sales? – it’s an invitation to the CEO to replay the talking points he or she so carefully learned for the conference call.

“Don’t ask predictable questions. Get them off script either by pissing them off or by asking a question out of left field.” This advice comes from a former reporter who now advises executives on how to be scripted. He didn’t want to be named.

The best approach is to have a narrowly-focused story you’re there to interview the CEO about and to stick to that topic. When I hopped onto the phone with Doug Parker, CEO of US Airways for this piece he knew the topic was how he communicates with his angry workforce and he was kind enough to answer the questions. I didn’t ask about other stuff.

As prepared as executives are to talk about their companies, I’ve found them less scripted – and more revealing – on the topic of themselves. Gary Kelly of Southwest Airlines is a fun person to interview, anyway, but for this profile he was generous in telling stories on himself. And for this profile of Mesa Air Group CEO Jonathan Ornstein, even though the topic was his sometimes disagreeable personality, he was perfectly agreeable in discussing it.

Jeff Bailey, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporter, writes for national business magazines. He lives in Chicago.

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Copyright © 2009 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism