Mick Confrey - Managing Director at Intersol Global - and associate Dr Clea Wright recently joined Daniel Barnett on his popular Employment Law Matters Podcast to discuss Strategies to Deal with Manipulative or Evasive Interviewees: Expert Tips for Investigators.

If an interviewee is being manipulative or evasive it’s important not to destroy the rapport and engagement that has been developed and end up in argument. Faced with an interviewee who is ‘fogging and fudging’ the interviewer should avoid becoming combative or adversarial but continue to manage the conversation and ‘stay on point’, politely but firmly bringing the interviewee back to the issue and probing the topic until satisfied, perhaps making more use of specific closed (yes/no) questions to secure definitive response(s). This is a good example of the role and responsibility of a co-interviewer if one is present, to support and ‘sweep-up’ for the lead interviewer towards the conclusion of topic exploration, when you would expect the lead to invite their co-interviewer in with a comment such as “Is there anything I’ve missed, or that you’d like to ask on the topic of…..”.

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