Why don't you just ask for their self-performance reviews / retrospectives for the last n years of their current/previous job after you've filtered by resume? I suspect that unless they were expecting it (which isn't unreasonable since a lot of interviewers have variants) "remarkably unsentimental" people like John Carmack would blow this part of the interview. Why do you care about the step-by-step process of my programming journey, which is irrelevant to whether the current me can help you out right now? If you're trying to test for passion ("why'd you start house painting anyway and what drove you to keep doing it for so many years?") or self-awareness there's probably a better way.
I would consider asking for that too invasive. I think the important thing to get a sense of is how they look at problem solving as a function of expertise.
In other words, it's possible to be smart but not act smart, and it's possible to act smart while not being exceptionally intelligent.
I'm basically looking for self-awareness of one's own cognitive limits and evidence of a meta-process that seems likely to result in better decision making than whatever the raw intellect would offer.
