Investigation interview training participants in Muscat, Oman - practicing interviewing skills during an EthicsVision International training course
Investigative interviewing is one of the parts of workplace investigations training that participants often feel most apprehensive about at the start of a course, and most enthusiastic about by the end.
That makes sense. Interviewing is quite easy to understand in principle and much harder to do well in practice.
Most investigators know they should prepare carefully, ask open questions, listen properly, avoid leading the interviewee and explore inconsistencies fairly. None of that is especially difficult to explain in a classroom. The challenge comes when you are actually sitting opposite someone whose answer bears little resemblance to what you expected.
Perhaps they mention something important almost in passing. Perhaps a witness gives an account that conflicts with the documents you already have. Perhaps the subject of an allegation provides an entirely plausible explanation for something that had previously looked suspicious. Perhaps the person simply talks for ten minutes without answering the question you asked.
At that point, the neat sequence in the training manual is of limited help. The interviewer has to decide what matters, what needs clarification, whether to change direction and how to do that without losing the structure of the interview.
That is why practical interviewing sits at the heart of many of our workplace investigations training programmes.
Using PEACE as a framework rather than a script
EthicsVision uses the PEACE model in its investigative interviewing training. It provides a useful structure for thinking through the full interview process, from planning and preparation through to engagement, obtaining the account, clarification and challenge, closure and evaluation.
What we try to avoid is teaching PEACE as something that can simply be memorised and reproduced. The real value sits in the thinking behind it.
Before an interview begins, an investigator should understand what they are trying to establish, what evidence is already available and where the gaps are. They need to consider the order in which topics should be explored, whether particular documents should be introduced and at what point, whether the interviewee has particular needs, and how the interview fits into the wider investigation.
A good plan gives an interviewer direction, but it should not leave them trapped by their own question list.
One of the habits we see most often among less experienced interviewers is the tendency to concentrate so heavily on the next prepared question that they miss something significant in the answer they have just been given. It can be surprisingly difficult to resist.
There is comfort in a well-organised interview plan, particularly when the subject matter is sensitive or the person being interviewed is senior, defensive or simply difficult to read. But investigative interviewing requires enough confidence to leave the plan temporarily when the evidence demands it.
That balance between preparation and adaptability is one of the reasons we give participants the opportunity to interview within the investigation scenario they have already been working on.
By the time they reach that stage, they are not walking into a generic role play cold. They know the fictional organisation. They understand the allegation. They have reviewed documents, discussed possible lines of enquiry and formed views about what they still need to establish. The interview therefore has a genuine purpose within the case.
Someone might need to clarify part of the chronology. Another interview may be needed to test an explanation against documentary evidence. A witness may be able to establish whether something happened at all, while an interview with the subject of the allegation may require the investigator to put conflicting evidence fairly and give them a proper opportunity to respond. That context changes the exercise considerably.
Participants are not simply trying to demonstrate that they can ask an open question. They are trying to move an investigation forward.
Where the most useful learning tends to happen
The interesting moments are rarely the ones that were perfectly anticipated. A participant may prepare an excellent series of questions and then discover that the interviewee answers the central issue in the first five minutes. Someone else may realise that the document they intended to rely on does not prove what they thought it did. An unexpected answer may introduce a new witness, a previously unknown record or an alternative explanation that the group had not considered.
Those moments create much richer learning than an interview exercise where every answer conveniently leads to the next prepared question.
Where appropriate, we use external role players, either in the room or joining remotely for a simulated virtual interview. This adds another level of realism because the participant does not know exactly how the interviewee will respond. It also produces much more useful feedback.
Some investigators discover that they ask several questions at once. Others fill silences too quickly, unintentionally rescuing the interviewee from having to think. Some move to challenge before they have fully established the person's account, while others are reluctant to explore an obvious inconsistency because they are worried about making the conversation uncomfortable.
None of these things is unusual. They are precisely the kinds of habits that practical training is designed to uncover.
The aim is not to turn the role play into a performance that someone passes or fails. It is to give investigators somewhere to try approaches, make mistakes, receive feedback and have another go before the stakes are real.
Challenge is part of interviewing, but confrontation does not have to be
One area that often generates discussion during investigative interviewing training is how to deal with conflicting evidence.
Workplace investigators sometimes worry that challenging an interviewee will make the interview adversarial. Others can move too far in the opposite direction and treat the interview as an exercise in proving that the person is wrong. Neither approach is especially helpful.
If a document conflicts with an interviewee's account, or two witnesses describe the same event differently, the investigator needs to explore that difference. But the purpose is to understand and test the evidence, not to score a point. How and when that evidence is introduced can make a significant difference.
An investigator may first want the interviewee's uninterrupted account. They may then clarify details, establish chronology and explore areas that remain unclear before putting contradictory information to them and asking for an explanation.
Sometimes that explanation changes the investigator's understanding completely. Sometimes it does not. Either outcome is useful, provided the issue has been explored fairly.
This is particularly important in workplace investigations, where the credibility of the process depends not only on the eventual findings but also on whether the people involved were given a reasonable opportunity to provide and explain their evidence.
Interviewing often tells you something about the rest of the investigation
Practical interviewing exercises have another useful habit: they expose weaknesses elsewhere.
Participants occasionally reach the interview-planning stage and realise that an allegation has never been defined clearly enough. They may discover that a document they assumed existed has not actually been obtained, or that speaking to one person before another would reveal information that could influence a later account.
Those discussions are important because interviewing does not sit separately from the rest of an investigation.
The quality of an interview depends on the quality of the planning that came before it. What is learned during the interview should then shape the enquiries that follow.
Embedding interviewing within a longer investigation scenario helps participants see those connections. It also prevents interview training from becoming a standalone exercise in questioning technique when, in reality, interviewing is one part of a much broader investigative process.
Investigative interviewing across international organisations
For international organisations, there is an additional dimension.
The underlying principles of good investigative interviewing remain consistent, but interviews take place within different organisational, cultural and professional environments.
An investigator working across the Middle East, Africa or Asia may interview people from very different backgrounds, levels of seniority and organisational cultures. Global investigation teams may also be conducting interviews remotely across jurisdictions or working with colleagues locally to gather evidence.
A structured framework such as PEACE provides useful consistency, but effective interviewing still requires judgement about communication, context and the individual sitting in front of you.
This is one of the reasons we favour practical exercises over prescriptive scripts. Investigators need a framework they understand well enough to adapt, rather than a fixed set of phrases that only work when the conversation behaves exactly as expected.
EthicsVision International provides practical investigative interviewing training both as part of wider workplace investigations programmes and as a focused area of development. Training can include the PEACE model, interview planning, questioning techniques, witness and subject interviews, evidence-based challenge, virtual interviewing and practical role play with feedback.
Ultimately, the test of interview training is not whether somebody can explain what a good interview should look like. It is whether they can still conduct one when the person on the other side of the table says something they did not expect.
