conducting effective workplace interviews · 3 conducting effective workplace interviews • there...

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Conducting Effective Workplace Interviews

April 22, 2010

Presented by Meric Craig Bloch


• Your goal is to find the truth.

• You need a defined strategy to achieve your goal.

• You need to control the interview.

• You determine when the witness is truthful and when they are deceptive.

• You must be able to collect data.

• You must be able to solicit admissions.

Effective interviewing is a professional skill

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• What do you know about the investigation and the witness so far?

• What is your objective in speaking to this witness?

• Attend, center and direct.

• Don’t overlook the mechanics of a good interview.

• Have the discipline to control your own responses.

Interviewing strategy and mechanics


• There are communication inhibitors:

• Time demands

• Ego threat

• Etiquette

• Trauma

• Forgetting

• Chronological confusion

• Unconscious behavior

• Different backgrounds or cultures

• The information is more important to you than the witness.

The dynamics of exchanging information

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• There are communication faciliators, however: • Fulfilling expectations

• Recognition

• Altruistic appeals

• Sympathetic understanding

• Catharsis

• Extrinsic rewards

• New experiences

• A communications facilitator makes a witness more forthcoming with information.

The dynamics of exchanging information


• You are the choreographer of the interview.

• What information do you want from the witness?

• There is no substitute for preparation.

• Review your hypothesis.

• Is there anything management needs you to find out for them?

• Thinking about post-investigation possibilities.

• Has this person been interviewed in the past?

• Consider your appearance and demeanor.

Personal preparation for an interview

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• Open-ended questions encourage a narrative.

• Expansion questions build from an open-ended question.

• Close-ended questions nail down specific facts.

• Leading questions proceed from your ulterior motive.

• The final question pushes things to the witness.

The type of question is important because the question determines the answer.

The types of questions witnesses are asked


• “I don’t want to get involved”

• “Why should I talk to you”

• “You can’t prove that”

• “You can’t make me talk”

Overcoming objections

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• “I am confident that you are guilty”

• Show them circumstantial evidence

• Observe deception

• Help with rationalization

• Minimize the significance of wrongdoing

• Be non-judgmental

• Show the futility of lying

Permitted interrogation tactics


• The factual interrogation

• The classic emotional interrogation

• The Wicklander-Zulawski method• It’s non-confrontational

• Convince witness you know they are guilty

• Use factual information and offer rationalization

• Build from a small admission

Methods of interrogation

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• Confessing is counterintuitive

• You can get away with lying

• The five reasons people don’t confess

• Why people do, in fact, confess

• The importance of rationalizations

• The types of denials you encounter

The decision to confess


• It can be told with acute memory

• It has a perceptive recounting of the facts

• It can be told in a flowing narration

• There is a consistent recollection of the facts

The truth

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• Telling the truth is easy

• Lying and deception are different but the same to you.

• Lying is difficult and intentional

• Lying is complicated

• Lying is stressful

The psychology of deception


• The stress of lying

• Stress that, however, may not signal deception

• Lying points you right to the lie

• Finding the baseline

The physical effects of deception

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• The simple denial

• The lie of omission

• The lie of fabrication

• The lie of minimization

• The lie of exaggeration.

Knowing how to respond to the lie will allow you to neutralize it.

The types of lies you will encounter


• No one gesture is dispositive.

• Look out for conscious and subconscious gestures

• Verbal clues that show deception

• Body language clues that show deception

• What do you do when you spot it?

Spotting the deception

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Questions, Anyone?

conducting effective workplace interviews · 3 conducting effective workplace interviews • there...

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