How to Get the Truth in an Exit Interview When They're Being Polite
Jordan is on his last week. VP of Product at a competitor — a title he asked for here and was told "maybe next cycle." Twice. He walks into the exit interview smiling, tie loosened, already half-gone. "Happy to chat," he says. "I want to make sure my feedback is useful." What follows will be thirty minutes of expertly diplomatic nothing unless you know how to get past it. "It was just a great opportunity I couldn't pass up." "The team here is wonderful." "I have nothing but good things to say." Every sentence is true. None of them are the truth. The truth is that Jordan was passed over for promotion twice, watched two less-experienced peers get the title he earned, and had a skip-level manager promise him a VP role that was never created. He is the third senior PM to leave in eight months. His departure is not a data point. It is a pattern screaming for someone to hear it.
Why This Conversation Goes Wrong
You accept the surface answer. "It was just a great opportunity" is the exit interview equivalent of "I'm fine." It is a polished deflection from someone who has decided that honesty has no upside. If you nod and move to the next question, you have just wasted both your time.
You try to counter-offer. Jordan has already accepted the new role. Asking "What would it take to keep you?" signals that the company only values people after they threaten to leave. It also poisons the remaining conversation — Jordan stops giving feedback and starts negotiating.
You get defensive about the company. When Jordan hints at broken promises, the instinct is to explain context: "The reorg made it complicated" or "Leadership was dealing with a lot." Every explanation tells Jordan that his frustration will be rationalized away, just like it was when he was still here.
You ask only about the company and never about the manager. People leave managers, not companies. If your exit interview questions are all about culture, benefits, and work environment, you are systematically avoiding the number one reason people quit: the person they report to.
The Real Reason Debrief
Exit interviews have an abysmal track record: most studies find they surface actionable information less than 30% of the time. The reason is not that departing employees have nothing to say. It is that they have no incentive to say it. The Real Reason Debrief restructures the conversation to make honesty feel safe, useful, and — critically — like it matters.
Disarm the diplomacy
"I'm going to be direct with you, Jordan. You're the third senior PM to leave in eight months. I don't think that's a coincidence, and I don't think 'great opportunity' is the whole story. I'm not asking you to be negative. I'm asking you to be honest — because if there's something broken here, the people who are still here deserve to have it fixed." This preamble gives Jordan permission to stop performing.
Ask about the specific, not the general
"Tell me about the moment you started looking. Not when you accepted the offer — when you first opened LinkedIn or took a recruiter call. What had just happened?" This question bypasses the prepared answer and goes to the emotional origin. There is always a moment — a meeting, a passed-over promotion, a comment in a 1:1 — where the departure began.
Go where they get quiet
When Jordan mentions "growth opportunities," pause and ask: "Can you tell me more about that?" When he hedges, ask again: "What specifically happened with your promotion path?" The places where a diplomatic person gets vague are exactly the places where the real feedback lives. Follow the hesitation.
Make it about the people who stayed
"If you could change one thing for the PMs who are still here, what would it be?" This question reframes honesty as an act of care for former colleagues rather than a complaint about personal treatment. It is remarkable how much more people will say when they are speaking on behalf of others.
The moment that changes everything
He decided to leave 14 months ago. He just didn't tell anyone.
The VP title Jordan is getting at the competitor is not the cause of his departure. It is the evidence he needed to confirm what he already believed: that his career at this company had hit a ceiling no one would acknowledge. Fourteen months ago, his skip-level manager said "We're creating a VP of Product role and you're the obvious choice." Six months later, the role wasn't in the budget. Three months after that, a peer with less experience was promoted to a newly created Senior Director position. Jordan never confronted it directly. He is too diplomatic for that. Instead, he updated his LinkedIn, took a recruiter call, and the rest was momentum. The exit interview is not where you save Jordan. That moment passed over a year ago. The exit interview is where you learn what to do differently for the eight senior PMs who are still watching what happened to him and deciding whether to update their own profiles.
What to Say (and What Not To)
Instead of
"What made you decide to leave?"
Try this
"Tell me about the moment you first started looking — what had just happened?"
Instead of
"Is there anything we could have done to keep you?"
Try this
"If you could change one thing for the PMs who are still here, what would it be?"
Instead of
"We're sorry to see you go."
Try this
"You're the third senior PM to leave in eight months. I want to understand why — not for a form, but because something is clearly broken."
Instead of
"How would you rate the culture on a scale of 1-10?"
Try this
"Tell me about your relationship with your direct manager. Specifically, what worked and what didn't."
Instead of
"We hope you'll consider coming back someday."
Try this
"The door is genuinely open. And I want you to know that your feedback today is going to the people who can change things, not into a filing cabinet."
The Bigger Picture
A 2022 Harvard Business Review study of 210,000 exit interviews found that only 19% of departing employees shared their actual primary reason for leaving. The rest gave answers that were true but incomplete — a more generous salary, a better title, a new challenge. The real reasons — broken promises, toxic managers, stalled promotions — were shared only when the interviewer specifically asked probing follow-ups and created genuine psychological safety. Exit interview data without depth is organizational fiction.
The pattern Jordan represents has a name: the "broken rung" problem, adapted from McKinsey's Women in the Workplace research but applicable to any promotion pipeline. When promises are made and not kept, the damage extends far beyond the person who was passed over. Every peer who watched Jordan get promised and denied a VP title recalibrated their own expectations. Organizational trust is not individual. It is observational. People do not need to be personally mistreated to lose faith — they just need to watch it happen to someone they respect.
The financial argument for better exit interviews is stark. Work Institute's 2023 Retention Report estimates that turnover costs organizations an average of 33% of the departing employee's annual salary. For a senior product manager, that is $50-70K per departure. Three departures in eight months means the company has spent $150-210K in attrition costs — enough to fund the VP of Product role they promised Jordan and never created. The irony is expensive.
Practice This Conversation
8 minutes · AI voice roleplay with Jordan Ellis
Reading about this is step one. Practicing it changes everything. Sonitura lets you rehearse this exact conversation with Jordan Ellis, a realistic AI senior product manager, 3.5 years at the company who reacts to your words in real time. It takes 8 minutes. The next time a departing star smiles and says "I have nothing but good things to say," you'll know exactly how to find the real story.
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