Professional Investigators Investigative Interviewing Course

Course description

If you're working in an investigative role it's likely that the interview of witnesses, complainants or persons of interest represents a large part of your work. With so many variables to think about, an interview can be a complex and stressful environment in which you're responsible for:

• Gathering accurate and reliable evidence and information
• Managing difficult conversations
• Working in complex compliance and regulatory frameworks
• Managing hostile interviewees and third parties such as Legal Advisors and/or Union Representatives
• Meeting investigative objectives and securing evidential outcomes

With so much going on, it can be easy to:

• Overlook lines of enquiry
• Lose track of your plan
• Lose confidence
• Become confused and lost
• Suffer anxiety and stress
• Submit sub-standard investigation statements and interview transcripts

What this course won't do:

• You won't learn how to interpret body-language to decide whether someone's lying or not (it's unreliable)
• You won't learn how to interrupt denials (it's unethical), and;
• You won't learn how to make someone confess (that's unethical too)

If that's what you're looking for - hit the search engines, there are plenty of places online that will take your money for such training.

What this course will do:

• Leave you able to interview confidently and thoroughly
• Allow you to interview ethically, to obtain accurate and reliable information from witnesses, victims and persons of interest (suspects)
• Leave you able to engage in the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE), to better expose deception where it occurs

This course comprises a wealth of theory and practical lessons designed to give you a strategic edge in any investigative interview or interrogation. The course contains knowledge distilled from the trainer's (ongoing) 25 year operational and teaching career in policing and investigations, put together in a professionally designed series of lessons.

You'll be led through some core subject theory looking at subjects like memory and the cognitive interviewing principles. Thereafter, we'll look at the theory underpinning four essential core skills of investigative interviewing; planning & preparation, rapport, questioning and listening. We'll highlight some academic research demonstrating that by employing these core skills we can conduct ethical interviews that result in an increase in accurate and reliable information and evidence, and leave us better able to expose deception where it arises.

Having covered off the relevant theory, we'll discover how we can use that theory to follow a couple of strategic interview models which will provide you with two fail-safe frameworks within which you can plan, conduct and evaluate investigative interviews with victims, witnesses and persons of interest, regardless of the levels of cooperation being experienced and regardless of the investigative context. We'll look at the 'Free Recall' and 'Conversation Management' models of interviewing and we'll consider how these models can be used with strategic and tactical planning designed to maximise evidential outcomes, every time.

By professionalising the way in which you conduct interviews in your investigative context, you will:

• Conduct professional interviews in which high-quality material, information and evidence will be obtained
• Demonstrate an open-mindset through the use of comprehensive and transparent planning methodologies
• Instil confidence and trust amongst your interviewees and wider stakeholders (Union representatives/Appropriate Adults etc.)
• Enable more comprehensive investigation outcomes to be achieved

To embed learning, we'll be using visual aids and the TILES System® interview management software which will enable you to 'see' interview strategies being played out in real-time.

This course has been designed to add value to any investigator, regardless of your experience or investigative remit. If you're seeking to expand your knowledge of investigative interviewing, and you wish to build your confidence and enhance your practical interviewing skills, this course will deliver you value.

With a 30-day full money back guarantee, you can be confident that this course will add value to your investigative skill-set. Feel free to register for a free trial with no obligation (and no credit card required) to take a closer look at the course content.