Defining precisely what is being investigated before starting, and establishing who can credibly run it. An investigator with a reporting line to either party has a problem that no amount of good process later will fix.
I.
Investigations
Workplace investigations training for investigations that hold up.
An investigation is the point where an organisation's judgement gets written down and kept. Most that fail do not fail on the finding — they fail on process: a scope that drifted, an interview that led the witness, a report that stated a conclusion without showing how it was reached. This training is about the craft of getting to a defensible answer and being able to show your working.
What's on this page
- What the training has to cover — the five stages, and where each one breaks.
- Where it goes wrong — the failures that show up repeatedly.
- What you should be able to produce — the records that make the decision defensible.
- The course — what it includes and what it costs.
II.
II.What it has to cover
Five stages, each with its own failure mode.
Investigations are learnable. The skills are specific and teachable, and the errors are predictable enough that most of them can be trained out.
Deciding what evidence exists, securing it before it moves or is deleted, and working out the order of interviews. Sequence matters more than people expect — interviewing the wrong person first can contaminate everything after it.
Open questions, no leading, no signalling of the preferred answer, and no promises of confidentiality that cannot be kept. This is the single highest-skill component and the one most often done on instinct.
Applying the correct standard of proof, handling directly conflicting accounts, and assessing credibility on something more defensible than demeanour. Most investigations turn on this stage and most training skips it.
Separating what was found from what should happen next, and writing a report that shows the reasoning rather than announcing the conclusion. The report is the artefact that gets read later, often by someone hostile to it.
III.
III.Where it goes wrong
Where investigations come apart.
In review, investigations are rarely overturned because the investigator reached an unreasonable conclusion. They are overturned on process.
- The scope quietly expanded
- An investigation into one incident that ends up covering three years of conduct has become something the respondent was never given a chance to answer. Widening scope can be legitimate — but it needs to be explicit, documented, and put to the person.
- The respondent could not meaningfully respond
- Putting allegations so vaguely that no real answer is possible is a procedural failure regardless of how strong the evidence is. The allegations need enough specificity to be answerable.
- Confidentiality was promised and then broken
- Investigators frequently promise blanket confidentiality to secure cooperation, then have to disclose to reach a fair outcome. Be accurate at the outset about who will see what — an honest limit is better than a promise you will break.
- Credibility was assessed on how someone presented
- Nervousness is not deception, and confidence is not honesty. Credibility findings should rest on consistency, corroboration, inherent plausibility, and motive — each of which can be written down and defended.
- The report stated a conclusion without the reasoning
- 'On balance, the allegation is substantiated' is a verdict, not a finding. A report that does not show which evidence was preferred and why gives a reviewer nothing to uphold.
- The investigator also decided the sanction
- Fact-finding and consequence are different functions. Collapsing them into one role invites the argument that the outcome drove the finding rather than the other way round.
IV.
IV.What you should be able to produce
What survives external review.
Assume the file will one day be read by someone whose job is to find its weaknesses. These are the artefacts that hold up when it is.
Terms of reference
Written and dated at the start: what is in scope, what is not, who is investigating, and under what authority. Any later change is recorded as a change.
An investigation plan
Who will be interviewed, in what order, and what evidence is being sought. Shows the process was designed rather than improvised as it went.
Interview notes, confirmed by the interviewee
Contemporaneous, and where practical reviewed and signed. Notes typed up from memory a week later carry very little weight.
An evidence schedule
Everything gathered, when, from where, and by whom. Gaps that are explained are survivable; gaps that are unexplained are not.
A report that shows its reasoning
For each allegation: the evidence, the conflicts, which account was preferred and why, and the finding. Recommendations kept separate from findings.
V.
V.The course
Conducting Workplace Investigations
The full process end to end, built around a worked case with genuinely conflicting witness accounts — because the hard part is never the case where everyone agrees. Includes the terms-of-reference, investigation plan, interview record, and report templates.
$129 · SINGLE COURSE · TEMPLATES INCLUDED · 12 MONTHS' ACCESS