Investigations

If you think about after the interview, you have to worry about termination hearings, unemployment hearings. You have to worry about the defense if you’re doing a criminal case. You have to worry about any other area where they may try to attack the investigation. Let’s talk about that.

Are you a “great interviewer” or are you someone trying to do interviews? Are you a “loss prevention professional” or are you someone who catches bad guys? Finding the right definition for yourself can make all the difference.

New precedent has been set in a case over a retail chain’s handling of workplace investigations. The recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board makes it presumptively lawful for employers to mandate confidentiality during workplace investigations.

While nonverbal behaviors are open to interpretation by observers, the word choice individuals use must have been intentionally picked to express the person’s meaning. By examining the words selected, an interviewer can identify underlying information that needs to be more fully explored.

The first thing we should consider when examining lying is the differing cognitive aspects of the liar and truth teller. The truthful person knows they didn’t do the crime, while the liar knows they did and must hide that information from others. There are multiple ways for interviewers to identify liars.

Most instructions to witnesses in an interview may seem pretty straight forward, simple to understand, and easy to comply with. But it never hurts to take the time to explain why these instructions are so important and why their conduct during the conversation can have such a big impact on the ultimate outcome of the conversation.

The detection of deception is a complex process, one that is never likely to be fully mastered by man without the help of technology. While researchers have generally focused on single nonverbal cues to identify deception, an investigator has a much richer environment offering a greater depth of clues to lead the investigation.

The holidays can be stressful in retail, to state the obvious. With crowded stores, frazzled employees, and grouchy customers, there may be days when you want to hide. They can also be a lot of fun as we try to close out our year with great results. During my career in retail, I’ve experienced a mix of both. Here are a few ways to help get through the next few weeks in one piece.

Being aware and cognizant of the words we use, and how they can impact the person across from us is vitally important during the course of an investigative interview because we never want to send the wrong message, but we also don't want to make it a much more difficult conversation than it needs to be.

Three different questions have come up recently in our seminars related to interviewing: confidentiality, interviewing juveniles or minors, and recording the conversation. Here is...