What Do You Do when You Know Someone Is Lying? Treaty Oak ELG, Workplace Investigation, Austin, Texas

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 to give them an opportunity to respond about their veracity. And the way that I’m going to do that is to say something like, “That’s hard for me to believe.” Or “What would you say if I told you that most of your peers disagree with you?” Or “What would you say if I told you that 12 people told me the opposite of what you told me?” If I have documents that indicate lies, I certainly will have those with me. On occasion, I will bring in an iPad that has documents related to the case on it and say, “Hey, I’m not going to use this. It’s turned upside down. It’s turned off and not recording. But I do want to be able to access reports because there are a couple of questions I need to ask you. And I’d like to point to things while I do it.” At the end of the day, if they’re not honest, they’re not honest. And that’s what I tell my client. I do not have a reasonability to convert a dishonest employee, just to give them an opportunity to respond to information about their dishonestly 

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