INTERVIEWING
Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP
Yulia Glam / iQoncept / Shutterstock.com
David Thompson, CFI
Thompson is the president and partner of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, providing investigative interview and interrogation training to a global audience. He has served as a subject-matter expert in developing curriculum and providing consultation to investigators, attorneys, and the academic community. He can be reached at dthompson@w-z.com. Sturman is the CEO and senior partner of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates and has led this international training organization for over a decade. Sturman has provided training for WZ for a variety of clients over the last twenty years. He is also a member of ASIS International’s Retail Loss Prevention Council. He can be reached at 800-222-7789 or at ssturman@w-z.com. © 2021 Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, Inc.
You Call That a Success? Think Again A
Not to take away from the importance of an interview resulting in a substantiated admission, but there is more than one way to measure success.
fter collecting the statement, closing the case file, and thanking the employee for their time, you eagerly call the boss to report your recent success. “Hey boss, I got the admission!” Boss: “Great, how much?” “Well, I knew it was about $100, and she ended up telling me she took $5,000!” Boss: “Well done, write it up!” A successful interview, right? Maybe. We remember those calls, both making them as excited interviewers and receiving them as proud supervisors. Throughout most interviewers’ careers, we become conditioned to recognizing a successful interview as one that resulted in an admission. This same theme is built through the congratulatory phone calls with supervisors, the metrics of admission dollars, and the braggadocious stories shared across the industry. Not to take away from the importance of an interview resulting in a substantiated admission, but there is more than one way to measure success. Entering the interview with the goal of an admission will create confirmation bias from the perspective of the interviewer and may also create tunnel vision, disallowing a good investigator to look for alternative strategies. Every interviewer should be March–April 2021
aware of the other potential avenues the conversation and evidence may lead. A successful interview should be measured against this flexibility. If the admission isn’t the singular metric of success, then what constitutes a successful interview? Countless conversations that we have had led to denials, explanations, fabrications, and even exoneration. The ability to stay focused on the goal of obtaining reliable information and adapting to the available evidence while mitigating risk is of utmost importance and a valuable skillset. A successful interview may go in countless directions, but let’s explore a few that should be defined as “successful.”
Factual Inconsistencies This is a common contingency plan when it seems the admission may not be a viable option. When the subject refuses to cooperate or insists on an alternative story, the interviewer’s job is not to alter the subject’s story but rather to get as much reliable information as possible. Often, the ability to disprove a statement made by the subject could be used in the same fashion as a confession. A case we had was initiated with an internal suspicion at an organization that the manager of purchasing had
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been receiving kickbacks from vendors. Forensic audits, asset searches, background checks, and open-source analyses were all conducted to retrieve as much information as possible. There was also evidence of multiple trips with specific vendors that did not seem to have a justified business need, suggesting the existence of personal relationships. With only circumstantial evidence, it would have been a mistake to enter with a guilt‑presumptive approach. Using admission as the measurement of success could have multiple negative results, such as increased liability, impact on morale, and potential wrongful termination. Instead, the interviewer strategized a conversation using the participatory method to allow the subject to provide their version of events, whether they were truthful or not. The goal in this case was to obtain as much information as possible that could either explain away the evidence, contradict the evidence, or lock them into their own statement. Ultimately, the subject told a detailed story, as was the goal of the interviewer. The method in which bids were selected, the policy around accepting gifts, the limitations of these relationships, and
