What do I do to define the scope of an investigation? Sometimes my clients really do need me to do the scope defining and that’s good and great and fine. And sometimes clients need to hear that there might not be investigative value in some of the things that are
How do we define the thing we’re trying to investigate? A reporting party may come to you and say, “I’m being harassed” or “I’m being discriminated against” or “I’m being treated poorly,” or they may use less magic words and say things like “I’m getting pushed around.” And ultimately, it’s
What do you do to collect evidence in an investigation? You just ask for it mostly. So, at the beginning, that’s typically the biggest piece of information gathering when you meet your client contact and they start prepping you up to go off to do your investigation. You’re going to
Why do I insist on confidentiality between interviews? Because it can be really destructive to the culture of an organization if there is complete transparency about everything that happens in an investigation to all people. Let me break that down a little bit. Obviously, when I’m doing a workplace investigation,
What do you do if somebody asks you about the investigative report? This comes up a lot, actually. Sometimes that happens during the interview, or sometimes somebody will ask you after the interview if there will be an investigative report or if they can have it. If somebody asks you
What do you do if there’s a crime committed? As the investigator, we are not very often going to also be legal counsel to the client with the issue. So, again, probably if you’re investigating a workplace situation, you are not a criminal investigator, and you need to be handing
What do you do if your client ignores your investigative findings? Let’s say for example, you determine that a manager discriminated against people. And in response, the client promotes that discriminator. Instead of firing the manager, they promote them. So they disregarded your investigative findings. You, as an investigator, have
What do you do if a client wants you to alter your investigative findings? I’m sad to say that this has come up. And this is sad, right? This is a lack of ethics. They hired you to be a neutral, independent third-party investigator. And then they try to control
What do you do if a client wants to edit your report? It depends on the edit. My reports mention the goals of the investigation. So for example, if a client wants to edit the goals of my investigation, that’s probably okay. Because if, for example, their real interest wasn’t
What do you do if your client contact has already told you what your investigative outcome should be? This happens an awful lot. It is rare that a client is thoughtful and experienced enough to truly download a situation without expressing their opinion on the outcome. It is just human
