Interviews are conversations that are designed to obtain information form another person. Effective interviewing requires the interviewer to manage the conversation consciously. Discussions of police interviewing in the United Kingdom currently reflect two contrasting philosophies that specify the skills to be mastered and applied to achieve contact, content, control, and credibility. The 'strategies' philosophy describes alternative approaches that the interviewer can select and use according to the interviewer's temperament and the demands of the situation. A contrasting and more useful philosophy is the conversation management philosophy, which defines interviewing as the intersection between consciously applied conversational processes and cognitive processes, resulting in a consciously monitored stream of decisionmaking that occurs before, during, and after the interview. The conversational competencies include the ability to control the exchange and the ability to signal concern with the thoughts and feelings of both oneself and others. The interview requires a flexible and ongoing process of judgments and decisions based on these conversational and cognitive competencies. 45 references.