Themes are Out: Ensuring Understanding to Gain the Truth

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.”

W. Clement Stone

I have been working on this blog for about a month now.  It started as an easy task to be done in an evening, but we must always be self-reflective and have a questioning spirit.  Was the way I learned about it the way it should be taught today? One of those topics is the employment of themes during our interviews.

Themes are historically employed in interviewing to restore the hope that has been lost during questioning/evidence presentation.  If you focus on consequences, you can’t restore the equilibrium that we are all searching to maintain.  Over the last several weeks we have explored the need to be authentic. We have looked at the need to be attentive to the issue of fear and its effect on getting to the truth.  (This is why I needed to consider how to present this topic.)  Then in the last blog we examined the need for providing hope and our need to provide that hope to get to the truth.

The use of the term themes seems like acting or thematic presentations, it seems inauthentic or disingenuous.  I think when you consider its appearance or how it has been characterized it could imply manipulation and a lack of searching for the truth. The truth is our true focus and North Star. That perception is totally out of line with the authenticity and credibility that is imperative for success, and which we teach continuously.

In these blogs I have addressed the issues of interview planning, development and maintenance of rapport, the art of asking good questions, as well as many other issues.  Each of these topics intersect with every aspect of interviewing including the planning and execution of effective empathy. That empathy and ensuring understanding would moderate hope and demonstrate our understanding of the individual and interaction before us. If you attempt to create this without adequate planning and preparation, we again will not be successful and will be violating our commitment to authenticity and credibility. 

Demonstrating our understanding and not being judgmental are often developed around three areas: rationalization, projection, and minimizations.  Most people choose to do what they do because of one or more of these three.  Consider your own lives and the reasons that you have made bad choices, poor decisions, or maybe even lied. They almost always fit into one or more of these three.

  1. Rationalization is justification for why someone would do what they did. An example would be, “You’re a good parent who wants to take care of your kids. It looks to me like you were just trying to put food on the table, like any good parent would.”
  2. Projection is the act of pushing the blame and responsibility for the event to someone else.  An example of this would be: “You asked for a raise twice and they turned you down.  If they had just listened when you asked for help, you could’ve done this the right way, like you wanted to.  They forced your hand when they wouldn’t help you.”  This one is becoming more prevalent in contemporary society.
  3. Minimization is downsizing the significance of the event compared to other occurrences or events. This might look like: “It’s not like this is a million dollars.  It’s pennies compared to what our government wastes every day. It’s not like anybody got hurt.”

Each of these requires that we understand the event (the what) and the motivation (the why) to build trust to a level that the interviewee (the who) will open up and share their story.  Clearly, authenticity and credibility are at the core of this entire process. We cannot improvise and fake here, we must be focused on the interviewee’s journey and needs.  If we come across without authenticity and credibility, why would anyone share the truth with us.

Addressing our understanding of these three elements allows the interviewee to rationalize, project, and minimize their behavior, which makes it easier for them to open up to the truth.  This provides an out for their actions, bad judgment or whatever, it excuses a certain amount of psychological culpability.  It minimizes the seriousness of the incident in the interviewee’s perception and allows them to save face.  We must encourage that. In almost any interaction “saving face” is imperative. We have to ask questions to full understand the interviewee and their motivation, and then address it with them.

Do not judge interviewees or condemn their actions.  Instead, we should help them justify why a “good person” would make this kind of “mistake.”  This process of rationalization creates a non-judgmental relationship between the interviewer and the suspect which fosters trust, builds rapport, and ultimately gets to the truth.

Everyone through their life experiences (parents, church, society) have developed a moral compass that justify and control actions.  These beliefs form the basis of our daily decision making.  When a decision is made to violate one, we use the process of rationalization to bring us back into equilibrium with our moral guidelines. 

When interviewing, it is our responsibility to provide hope in the interviewee that this equilibrium can be re-established.  This hope is what allows the interviewee to tell the truth.  There has to be hope and a future to move forward toward. What is important is their moral compass and beliefs; not yours.

In this process of ensuring understanding, the opportunity exists for the development of a relationship with the interviewee.  Remember, as mentioned above, the relationship is one of a mediator, rather than an adversary.  This allows the interviewee to view the interviewer more favorably (or humanly).  The interviewee sees the interviewer as a person who faces problems and turmoil in his everyday life, just as they do.  This creates trust.  If this trust is not created, the interviewee is significantly less likely to reveal the truth.

This process also allows the interviewer to create the perception of transferring the burden to someone or something else.  This minimizes the interviewee’s perception of the seriousness of the event.  This has the appearance of making the interviewee a victim of circumstances rather than the initiator of the event.

The whole interaction allows the opportunity to focus the interviewee’s attention on the resolution of the incident, rather than the consequences.  This focus on the resolution is essential to allowing the interviewee to put the incident behind them and helping the interviewee to know that it is best to tell the truth.  If the focus remains on the consequences (jail time, fines, and loss of employment) the interviewee is much less likely to open up and be truthful.

Related to this is the topic of fear.  We must be cognizant and aware of fear in every interviewing interaction. The entire process described above, if done effectively allows the interviewer to overcome the fear that the interviewee has to tell the truth.  That fear is always based on the consequences of what they did, and what will happen to them.  This fear and the issues associated with it must be surmounted before the truth can be obtained.  If as an interviewer you can keep this fear issue paramount in your mind (as we talked about in several previous blogs), the other items in the process of rationalization flow from it.

Anderson Investigative Associates is positioned to custom-tailor training to your specific needs.  If you have any questions or would like to discuss the above issue of ensuring understanding through building trust or any training need, please reach out.  Additional issues pertaining to interviewing, auditing, and investigations can be found in other blogs and videos that I have produced and are contained in most blocks of instruction that our company presents.

If you have additional questions, comments, or have an interviewing topic you would like me to address, give me a shout. I would appreciate hearing from you. In the meantime, be well, stay safe out there, and find a way to connect, ensure understanding, and showing empathy….it will improve your interviewing success and many dimensions of your life. And don’t be afraid to introspectively consider if you are doing it the best way for success.

Mark A. Anderson

Director of Training and Development

Anderson Investigative Associates, llc

114 Loucks Avenue

Scottdale, PA 15683

manderson@andersoninvestigative.com

tel:912-571-6686

www.AndersonInvestigative.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-a-anderson-a46a1658