What do you do if your interviewee doesn’t understand what you’re asking because they lack capacity or because you expect that they lack capacity? It is very unlikely that you, as an investigator, can make a determination about someone’s capacity. There are certainly tests the layperson can utilize to determine
What do you do if you know someone is lying? I think that we owe the humans we come into contact with, particularly in investigations, the opportunity to respond to the knowledge that their veracity is being challenged. And so even if I know that someone is lying, I’m going
What do you do if your investigative plan isn’t working? Let’s say you interviewed your reporting party, came up with an investigative lineup, and, those people have no idea what you are asking about. Let’s say your plan is just not working. Assuming you’re billing your client by the hour,
What do you do with investigative facts? This concept is the foundation of your first step in an interview. You learn all the properties of a given fact and you do not just accept anything as fact before you know all of the “fact’s” properties. You ask all the ‘W’s
What do I do about the kinds of conclusions that I can make? First, investigators do not make legal conclusions. Judges make conclusions of law. Since we are not judges and we are not juries, we do not make conclusions of law. We can talk about what is ‘more likely
What do you do to create an investigative report template? I would start with the Association of Workplace Investigators report templates. You do have to be a member to get them, but AWI’s templates are exceptional. At the end of the day, every report is somewhat unique, but very few
What do you do if you make an investigative exception? As investigators, the way that we can best avoid liability is by having consistent practices. And so, when we deviate from our consistent practice, we need to document why we did that. In all likelihood, any attention our deviation receives
How do you use investigative counts to help with your investigation? Investigative counts are simply counts of opinions of people that you’ve interviewed. So, if the accusation is that Tom is mean to men, and I talked to 10 people, I’m going to ask all 10 people, including Tom, if
What do you do if your investigation is very delayed? You explain it. We always have a duty to create a prompt investigation. Here in Texas now, since 2021, we have a duty to do an “immediate” investigation. Point is, it should be done as soon as possible, but sometimes
