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Deception Detection
5. Exceptional interviewers are as aware of their body language as they are aware of their interviewee’s.
6. The best fact finders are active listeners who use both verbal and nonverbal means to show the interviewee they are listening and that what they have to say is important.
7. Lying is learned while honesty is earned.
“The question: What will happen if I tell the truth, is an admission dis-guised as a lie and the answer: If I did it, it was a mistake, is a lie disdis-guised as an admission.”
E. F. Ferraro
6.1 Introduction
Some students are smarter than others. During a recent two-day advanced interviewer training course, my co-instructor engaged one of the students in an attempt to demonstrate the use of questions to determine the cognitive skills of an interviewee. The instructor requested a volunteer and invited him to the front of the class and to sit with him at a table staged for an interview. Once seated, the instructor told the student, “I will ask you a question and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me one, and if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $500.” With the class cheering him on, the student eagerly accepts the challenge.
The instructor smiles and asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the Earth to the Moon?” The student squirms in his seat and tugs his ear. Without say-ing a word, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a $5 bill and hands it to the instruc-tor. Rooting for their classmate, several in the class offer mock boos and toss jeers at the instructor. Now it’s the student’s turn. He collects himself and confidently leans back into his chair. In proper interviewer style (notepad at the ready, pen in hand), he asks, “What goes up a hill on three legs and comes down on four?”
This time the instructor squirms. Rubbing his forehead, crossing his arms, then gazing up as if the answer was somehow written on the ceiling, he tells the stu-dent he doesn’t know the answer. He digs five crisp Franklins from his pocket and begrudgingly hands them to the student. As he does and with complete loss of any semblance of professionalism, he snaps, “Well, smarty-pants, so what goes up a hill on three legs and comes down on four?” Without saying a word, the still smiling student hands the instructor another $5 bill and leaps from his chair with clenched fists thrust high over his head. The class goes nuts. With high fives and laughter everywhere, we broke and took a well-earned 15-minute break.
Tip: Because some students (interviewees), in fact, are smarter than others, the professional investigative interviewer should never, ever underestimate the cogni-tive abilities of those they interview.
6.2 Why Most People Tell the Truth
It is human nature to resist doing something that is uncomfortable. Even under the best of circumstances, admitting one’s transgressions to a stranger or someone of authority is uncomfortable. Whether the stakes are large or small, it is not fun to admit one’s mistakes. Fortunately, for most people, telling the truth is instinctual.
On the other hand, lying seems to be learned. One learns to lie through conditioning.
For example, a child frequently disciplined for misbehaving after admitting his/her offense might equate punishment with telling the truth. In the same fashion, a child might eventually learn that lying tends to prevent punishment. If this conditioning continues, we could expect the child to eventually conclude that lying is an accept-able behavior and, when used properly, it can prevent undesiraccept-able outcomes in some circumstances. This is not the type of person one would hope to marry or employ.
Although it may sound a bit trite, fortunately most of us in our Western society have learned that honesty is the best policy. Intellectually, we know that sometimes telling the truth can hurt and inflict emotional harm on both the truth teller and his victim. On other occasions telling the truth may result in severe punishment and very undesirable consequences. However, experience shows that all things equal, most people in our society choose to tell the truth. That is a good thing.
Much of the normalcy in our lives depends on us and others consistently telling the truth. Be it personal relationships, interactions with our employer and co-workers, our criminal justice system, our tax system, or everyday commerce, exchanging the truth with those we interact with enables our society to function properly. Truth telling builds trust and improves the quality of our lives. It makes our life and inter-action with those around us predictable. That predictability improves the efficiency of society. In contrast, imagine a society where the words of no one can be trusted;
one in which every communication, message, label, advertisement, every spoken or written word could not be trusted and had to be vetted. What an awful, wasteful place that would be to live.
From the investigative interviewer’s perspective, one should assume the following:
◾ Most people are honest.
◾ Most people want to tell the truth.
◾ Most people know that those that are untruthful cannot be trusted.
◾ Most people know that those that are untruthful are punished.
It may appear these assumptions are naïve; however, remember our topic is inves-tigative interviewing in the private sector. And, although occasionally the fact finder will investigate matters that are both allegations of policy violations and crimes, the criminal aspects of the offense are typically secondary. In most circumstances, the worst tangible punishment that the transgressor can receive is termination. While harsh, it is magnitudes less than life in prison or execution. Thus, comparatively, the price for admitting a workplace offense is less than that one would pay for that of admitting a crime. Secondarily, the people under investigation in a private sector matter are for the most part screened, tested, carefully selected, and demonstrably honest and trustworthy. As a result, there is a disparate impact on those who are not.
In essence, those who are honest and of good character are hired and those who are (were) not, are turned away. All the good reasons one was hired are the same rea-sons we should expect our investigative interviewees to be honest when confronted.
Granted, many of the transgressions we investigate deals with the absence of integrity.
However, in the final analysis, they are proved to have been transgressions involving the suspension of integrity. That is, the transgressions are not the product of a defect in character, but merely lapses of judgment—and poor decision making. Resultantly, the offender is more likely to be truthful and admit guilt when properly confronted.
However, there are some disturbing exceptions.
6.3 Why Good People Sometimes Do Bad Things
6.3.1 Guiltlessness and the Enemy Within
Many organizations mischaracterize charm and charisma as leadership traits. They like leaders with confidence and demeanor. In selecting them, they often fail to rec-ognize their anointed leaders’ most deceptive skill—the ability to plausibly describe the opposite of their real intentions. Here’s such a case.
Bain skated through high school.1 With grades good enough to attend almost any college, he chose a midtier state school. Rarely attending class and never appear-ing to study, he earned the name Bain the Brain. He was indifferent to the women he dated. He drank alcohol when served at parties and experimented with drugs.
His father, an accomplished lawyer, encouraged him to pursue a career in law.
What excited him, however, was money.
Misleading the headhunters and the HR professionals who interviewed him, he was offered an entry-level position at a large investment bank on Wall Street.
Quickly he rose up through the organization and became a partner at the age of 30.
He married Sara the same year. Soon they had children. However, Bain was always distant. He blamed the demands of his job for not spending more time with his family. While on travel, he lived large and recklessly. He over-imbibed, abused his expense account privileges, and slept with whoever would have him. Bain was also ruthless. Backstabbing his colleagues, undercutting his competitors, and swindling
unsuspecting investors came natural to him. He peddled influence and bartered with information. At the age of 45, he was at the top of his game—and then he made a mistake.
Using what regulators later described as insider information, he invested his organization’s money on a $150 million bet. He was caught, tried, and con-victed. He was ruined. But, during his sentencing, he smirked and whispered in the ear of his attorney, “What disappoints me most is your inability to set me free.”
Bain is a sociopath. Sociopaths are known for their shallowness of emotion, and the hollow and transient nature of the affectionate feelings they claim to pos-sess. They are risk-takers and adventure seekers. They possess no empathy, guilt, or remorse. Sociopaths may feel anger, but never experience sadness or shame. They have no conscience.
Are all malfeasants sociopaths? No. Most transgressors are not as complex as Bain nor can they be clinically diagnosed as sociopaths. However, clinicians esti-mate that about 4 percent of the population are sociopaths or exhibit sociopathic behaviors.2 In comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that colon cancer rates in the United States are “alarmingly high” with roughly 40 individuals per 100,000 afflicted each year—a rate 100 times lower than those with an antisocial personality disorder.3 Arguably, those who wish to do us harm are all around us. In fact, many organizations unintentionally recruit them. There are four possible reasons for this.
1. The talents of many sociopathic wrongdoers often seem valuable to employ-ers. Many are charming, seemingly gracious, polite, and considerate. They are able to turn on their charm and use their charisma to disarm even the most experienced professional. They are skilled at social manipulation and a job interview is the perfect place to ply those talents.
2. Many organizations mischaracterize charm and charisma as leadership traits.
They seek talent that is able to think on its feet. They like leaders with confi-dence and demeanor. In selecting them, they often fail to recognize the ability of these individuals to plausibly describe the opposite of their real intentions.
3. In the race to embrace change, many organizations (and nations for that matter) willfully overlook obvious character flaws and the shallowness of those who promise to delivery that change. Desperate for the change they seek, they assume the best of people and put aside their instincts and natural aversions.
4. Sociopathic wrongdoers are characteristically rule breakers. They like fast-paced, competitive, and transitional organizations. By their very nature, this type of organization actively seeks individuals who are risk-takers and easily motivated by opportunity and reward. A more perfect match for the malfea-sant sociopath is not possible.4
6.3.2 The Ability to Rationalize
What distinguishes our species from all others is its capability for rational thought and conscious decision making. However, it is the ability to distinguish right from wrong that uniquely makes us human; the guardrail that provides that ability is our conscience. The late Dr. Donald Cressey was the first to recognize the relationship between transgression and the ability to rationalize. As a sociologist and criminolo-gist, Cressey expressed his theory in what has become known as the fraud triangle (Figure 6.1).5
Cressey points out that even the best systems of internal control cannot pro-vide absolute safeguards against irregular activities perpetrated by malfeasants.
According to Cressey, of the three elements—opportunity, motivation, and ratio-nalization—under most circumstances, society can only control opportunity.
Though created to assist in the design of organizational internal controls, this model is overly simplistic; however, it is still useful in understanding the mind of the mal-feasant and the significance of his ability to rationalize. Let’s take a closer look.
Manipulation and deceit are essential components in almost all forms of work-place misconduct. Barring unintentional negligence, malfeasant behavior requires the perpetrator to possess the ability to rationalize. Often this is a simple cost-benefit analysis. Most perpetrators rationalize the intended behavior by consciously mini-mizing the cost and exaggerating the benefit. Common rationalizations include thoughts such as, “everybody does it, so why shouldn’t I,” or more pathetically, “I earned it and they owe it to me.” In doing so, the malfeasant uses rationalization to overcome the confines of his conscience. Sociopaths, on the other hand, intellectu-ally recognize the true cost and value of the benefit, but simply do not care. For them, they are the center of the universe. They are unable to view their behavior as unethical, selfish, or immoral because they lack a conscience. Rationalization for them is merely a distraction.