15th Jun 2026 by Adjust

Neuroinclusive Recruitment: Interview Questions in Advance

Interview questions in advance open door

When we deliver our Neurodiversity Understood training for HR teams and our Neurodiversity Understood for Recruiters course, this question often comes up.

A neurodivergent candidate has asked to see the interview questions in advance. Is this a reasonable adjustment? Should we share them?”

It is a good question. But we think the actual question is bigger than that.

At RecFest 2024 I saw Lorna Bullett, talent acquisition lead at John Lewis Partnership, talk about why John Lewis had decided to publish all of their interview questions online. The driving force was not reasonable adjustments. It was making their recruitment process more effective.

“Anyone who has ever recruited will know that there are sometimes candidates who would be capable of performing to a high standard in a role but don’t always give the best performance at an interview. It made us question why we couldn’t do something different.”

So they did. John Lewis published their interview questions online for every role, from entry level to senior leadership. Not as a reasonable adjustment, as standard practice. Lorna Bullett later described the response to the initiative as a viral sensation, with coverage from outlets including the BBC and Fortune.

What is the purpose of an interview?

A job interview exists to find out whether someone can do the role.

The question worth asking before you design any recruitment process is: what competencies are you actually looking to assess? Sharing interview questions in advance makes it more likely a candidate can demonstrate those competencies. Otherwise traditional interviews assess working memory, fast verbal processing, the ability to read context quickly, and the capacity to mirror unwritten social rules. For most roles, none of those are on the job description.

What if candidates use AI to generate answers?

This concern comes up a lot. If candidates have the questions in advance, won’t they just use AI to script their answers?

Possibly. But if an interviewer cannot tell the difference between a candidate describing genuine experience and someone reading a generated answer, that is not a problem with sharing the questions. It is a problem with the interview itself.

A skilled interviewer asking good follow-up questions will hear the difference. Specific detail, authentic examples, the texture of real experience do not survive a probing follow-up if they were not genuinely lived. AI has not created this problem. It has made an existing one harder to ignore.

Are interviews fit for purpose?

If AI can pass your interview, it is worth asking whether the interview was doing its job in the first place.

The answer is not to make interviews harder or more secretive. It is to design better assessments. Work samples, skills-based tasks, structured competency conversations with strong follow-up questions assess what someone can actually do rather than how well they perform in an interview.

Sharing questions in advance is part of that shift. It moves the focus away from recall under stress and towards a genuine conversation about evidence of capability. That is better assessment for everyone.

When is it reasonable not to share interview questions in advance?

Under the Equality Act, a reasonable adjustment is one that removes a substantial disadvantage for a disabled candidate.

There are some roles where responding quickly to unexpected verbal information is itself a core competency. In those cases, an employer may have grounds not to share questions in advance because doing so would change what is being assessed. That argument needs to be specific to the role, not a blanket policy.

Better for everyone

The best recruitment processes are designed to find out what someone can do. Publishing interview questions in advance makes that more likely, for every candidate.

As Lorna Bullett said

We want the right people, from a variety of backgrounds, with the best talent to join our organisation. It makes absolute business sense to find ways of helping candidates to really demonstrate what they can do so that we get the right fit for the role.

f you want to make your recruitment process more neuroinclusive, our Neurodiversity Understood for Recruiters course is aimed at HR teams, recruitment teams, and anyone involved in hiring. Join our upcoming free webinar about neuroinclusive recruitment in practice.

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