Detecting Deception: Practical Skills for HR Professionals
"Kevin is innocent, yet he displayed all these classic stereotypical cues to deception."
What it was about
Most of what people believe about spotting deception (avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, blink rate) is scientifically wrong. HR investigators get far more reliable results with research-based techniques, like the cognitive interview, that focus on listening to what witnesses say rather than watching how they act.
By the numbers
Key notes
- Focus on listening to the content of what a witness says rather than watching their body language, since demeanor is a poor predictor of deception.
- Use the cognitive interview technique (rapport-building, free narrative, drawing the scene, follow-up questions, reverse-order narration, and unexpected questions) to elicit more detail and expose inconsistencies.
- Ask open-ended questions like "What happened?" and "Then what?" instead of closed-ended questions, since truth-tellers naturally provide more detail when given room to talk.
Take this back Monday
Retrain investigators to ask open-ended questions and delay confronting witnesses with evidence until later in the interview.
Body language like eye contact and fidgeting doesn't predict lying — we train investigators to listen for verbal cues instead.
Watch out for
- Relying on stereotypical body-language cues (avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, increased blink rate, looking up and to the right) that research shows are not valid predictors of deception.
- Using in-your-face, prosecutorial interrogation styles that cause witnesses to shut down rather than talk.
- Revealing suspicion or confronting contradicting evidence too early in an interview, before the witness has committed fully to their story.
He's a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who became a serial entrepreneur, founding and selling two online training companies to private equity firms.
