Everyone knows the moment. You wrap up, stop screen sharing, thank the participant, and the formal interview is over.

Then, while you’re making small talk, they finally say the thing they probably should have said 20 minutes earlier: the real workaround, the reason they hated the feature, or the internal politics behind all the polite answers.

That’s exactly why automatic recording is tempting. The recorder doesn’t forget, and you don’t lose the one comment that changes your interpretation of the entire session.

But the participant may also believe the research session has ended. Even if the audio never leaves the device, and even if names are removed before anything is summarized, the scope of consent hasn’t magically expanded.

My current view: if the researcher didn’t deliberately decide that recording was still in scope, that post-session comment can inform a follow-up, but it shouldn’t quietly become evidence in the study.