Regardless of the application, be it a feature article, a personal, company or product profile, artist bio or technology review, whatever the topic or format, whoever the client, my job is to wrap my arms around the subject and gain a thorough understanding of it.
In order to write effectively about the something I’m covering, I need to have a clear picture of the people behind that something - who they are, what they do, why and how they do it, and what they want to convey to the reader.
To my mind, the best way to do that is to ask a lot of questions, to listen - to be willing to, if necessary, go down a few rabbit holes to get not only the information I need for the piece, but the context and additional details required to convey those things to the intended audience.