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 will be in several years, when we are unlikely to recall why we made an exception in a particular instance.
An example might be that our client has a practice that is inconsistent with our practices. Or, maybe you or I don’t generally record my interviews but this client always records its interviews so you do in this instance. In this example, we have this really good business reason for deviating from our best practices. Or maybe you just record one interview. Maybe the person you’re interviewing has a speech impediment and you just want the opportunity to triple check that you can have the option of going back and re-listening to things they said for nuance or for things that you might’ve missed the first time because of a speech impediment. Whatever the reason is, make sure that it’s fair across the board, that it doesn’t create bias within your investigation, and then document, document, document.
