3 Witness Interview Mistakes That Can Wreck the Effectiveness of the Interview

Are you making these 3 witness interview mistakes? If so your witness interviews will not be as effective as they should be.

Witness interviews, whether part of an internal HR investigation or a litigation investigation, are the most important tool in your investigation tool kit.

So getting them right matters. But sometimes we limit an interview’s effectiveness by the processes we follow.

And that’s not your fault. In fact, most people who have to conduct witness interviews aren’t trained in how to do them. 

Kinda like trial by error or baptism under fire.

In particular, these 3 mistakes will keep your interviews from being as effective as they should be. And here’s what you can do to fix them.

I conducted over 12,000 witness interviews during 30 years of conducting case preparation investigations for law firms, and internal investigations for for businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, 

My free guide, 6 Steps to More Effective Witness Interviews. can help you to get this important process right.

Mistake #1: Forgetting that You Need the Witness’s Information More Than the Witness Needs to Give It to You

A witness interview is really just a process used to transfer information that one person possesses to another person. That information once transferred can then be used to guide decision making.

When done right, the interview process should make it as easy as possible for the person with the information to provide it to you.

But sometimes the focus of the interview process shifts from getting the witness’s information to our need to get that information. It’s a subtle shift, but a significant one.

That can be caused by the pressure to complete the interview by a certain deadline. Other times the shift occurs because of the pressure we put on ourselves to “get it right”.

Neither of these situations matter to the person possessing the information. Witnesses don’t concern themselves with your need to complete the interview by a certain date, or whether you conduct the perfect interview.

Those issues only matter to you or your employer.

But, feeling pressure to just get the interview done, or to get specific results, shifts your focus away from the information the interviewee possesses, and puts it squarely onto you.

And that alters the nature of the interview.

This first mistake that can impact the effectiveness of an interview is really about mindset.

The easiest way to shift your mindset back to where it needs to be to make the interview as effective as possible is for you to recognize and be empathetic about, the challenges that witnesses face. 

An interview causes a witness to relive the event. And whether that’s workplace violence related, or a fatal car wreck, it can be pretty traumatic for the witness to experience that over again.

Often times witnesses experience pressure to not get involved. It can be from family and friends, or in workplace related investigations, from the fear of retaliation and the risk of losing your paycheck.

Being mindful of the witness’s experience helps you return your focus to what matters most with an interview. The information. And that in turn will make it more effective. 

And finally, do what you can, within the confines of confidentiality, to explain to the witness what’s going on, and why the witness’s participation is a part of the process.

Doing so helps to calm the witness and puts context on your need for the information. 

Mistake #2: Forgetting That It’s Witness’s Answers That Matters Not the Questions You Ask

When it comes to conducting an effective witness interview it’s the witness’s answers that matter, not the questions you ask.

It’s normal to fear forgetting to ask certain questions. So on the face of it, creating a specific list of questions to ask during the course of an interview makes sense.

But here’s why you shouldn’t do that, and what you can do instead, to make sure you don’t leave out information you need to cover.

Working from a preprepared list of questions shifts your focus onto the next question on your list, and away from what the witness says.

It’s human nature. It happens to anyone working from a prepared list of question. Your brain says, “next question”, as soon as you ask the question above it.

And what it should be doing instead is listening to, and documenting the answer.

So if you are thinking about the next question to ask, you’re not fully hearing what the witness tells you.

And there’s a second problem that comes from preparing a list of questions to work from when conducting an interview.

What do you do when the witness provides you with unexpected information? Perhaps even opening up new, but unexpected, avenues of information to explore.

It happens. A lot. Witness interviews provide you with the freedom to ask the questions you don’t already know the answers to.

And that means something you did not anticipate can crop up. And for an interview to be effective you have to follow any new information to its logical conclusion. 

To do so requires deviating from your prepared list of questions. Most likely when you prepared your list of questions it was designed to flow from one to the next in the way you wanted the interview to progress. As a result, it requires you to shift gears.

And that’s not so easy to do.

So here’s how to conduct the interview effectively without creating a list of specific questions. As you prepare for the interview, identify the topics you need to cover. And create a list of topics instead of a specific list of questions.

Unlike a list of questions, which tends to be sequential, topics don’t follow a sequence, so you can cover them in whatever sequence best suits the interview and the witness. As long as prepared adequately for the interview, you’ll be able to work from a list of important topics to cover that covers the information that’s important.

And because you’re not thinking about the next question on the list, your focus is on the answers. Where it should be.

And it gives you the flexibility and freedom to follow any new information when it surfaces at the time it surfaces. If you’re in the midst of a topic that you want to stay with when new information arises, you can always add the new information to your topic list, and come back to it as soon as you can.

Plus, working by topics allows you to prepare a topic based interview summary. Topic based summaries can be organized to highlight the most important information first, and they make it easier for others to spot the information they need when reviewing the interview summary.

Mistake #3: Bullet Pointing Your Notes Instead of Documenting What the Witness Says in the Witness’s Own Words. 

Most people learned note taking skills in school. And that often resulted in using bullet points when taking notes. Both to highlight what you think is important, and because it makes it easier to create an outline from your notes to use for studying.

But when it comes to documenting witness interviews don’t use bullet points.

A bullet point is a real time assessment of the information in real time that is distilled down. Bullet points paraphrase what’s said by the witness but in your own words based upon your view as to what’s important.

That’s definitely not what should be happening. Further bullet pointing focuses your thought process on analysis and rewording and not on listening.

The time to assess what they witness tells you comes later. When you prepare the witness interview summary. That’s when you can interpret the information.

Instead, trying documenting what the witness says using the witness’s words and phrasing. To be able to do that you’ll need to learn to reflect back to the witness what the witness said to you while you document it in the way it’s said. You can also say something like “you told me _____ can you take me back through that. I want to make sure that I get it right.”

In addition to capturing what the witness tells you rather than what you think the witness means, documenting the interview in the witness’s own words will make it super easy to prepare a declaration or affidavit regarding the information provided, which is supposed to be the witness’s sworn testimony.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling when after reading the affidavit or declaration you’ve prepared, the witness says. “Yep. That’s what I said."

The quality of your witness interviews directly impacts the effectiveness of your investigation. Download my free guide 6 Steps to More Effective Witness Interviews.