> We ended up conducting 37 interviews overall, 32 of which we were able to use (we had to remove 5 because participants didn’t follow directions)

Removing interviewees because they don't follow directions seems like a good strategy. And I mean removing them as job candidates, not removing them from the study.

It's good to have something in the interview process used explicitly for weeding out people who don't follow directions. Something like "Email us your application, and put the word 'eggplant' somewhere in the subject line. We use it to filter out spam." And then literally delete any subjects that don't have "eggplant" in them.