Serendipity in interviews

In part one, experienced CFEs described how preparation and flexibility are the keys to good interviews. Here they discuss how they can discover surprising new evidence by asking incisive questions and waiting for serendipitous moments. We also cover question typology, body language, moving toward admissions and more.

ACFE Regent Alexis C. Bell, M.S., CFE, PI, once was in Brussels, Belgium, to investigate a 175,000 euros procurement case. “While I was wrapping up a two-hour, information-seeking interview with an employee, I said, ‘I’m here to help you. Management is paying very close attention to this case. If there is anything else you want me to convey to them, now would be the time to say something. I can’t guarantee they will address the issue, but I can certainly try. Perhaps there is something you’d like to tell me? Is there anything that bothers you or keeps you up at night?’ Then I sat back and waited,” Bell says.

“He leaned forward in his chair and said, ‘You know, there is this one thing that I’ve been trying to get someone to pay attention to for almost 20 years, but no one is listening. …’

“That open-ended question at the close of an interview for a small investigation detected a 300 million euros case,” Bell says. “Now, I always close every interview with the question: ‘Is there anything else you want to tell me?’ ”

Bell knows that thorough preparation is integral for a successful interview. An interview is a formal question-and-answer session designed to elicit information. The ACFE says that it differs from an ordinary conversation in that the interview is structured — not free-form — and is designed for a purpose.

However, experienced interviewers also know that they can discover surprising new evidence by asking incisive questions and waiting for serendipitous moments.

Fraud Magazine recently informally surveyed several experienced CFEs to gather their views and methods of that important component of fraud examinations: interviewing.

In part 1 in the May/June issue, we covered pre-interview preparations, lists of subjects to interview, interview space, devising questions and establishing rapport. Here we’ll review question typology, questions in action, mixing it up for results, body language, subjects’ deception, moving toward admissions and learning experiences.

Question typology

An interviewer can ask five general types of questions: introductory, informational, assessment, closing and admission-seeking.

According to the ACFE’s CFE Exam Review Course, during a routine interview in which the object is to gather information from neutral or corroborative witnesses, the interviewer will ask only three of the five types: introductory, informational and closing questions. If the interviewer has reasonable cause to believe the respondent isn’t being truthful, they can ask assessment questions. Finally, if the interviewer decides with reasonable cause that the respondent is responsible for misdeeds, the interviewer can pose admission-seeking questions.

Introductory questions

Interviewers can use introductory questions to provide an introduction and to get respondents to verbally agree to cooperate in interviews.

Informational questions

Once interviewers set proper formats for interviews, they then gather facts with open, closed and leading questions. Open questions are worded in a way that makes it difficult for respondents to answer “yes” or “no.” Closed questions are those that require a precise answer, “yes” or “no.” Leading questions contain the answer as a part of the question.

Closing questions

In routine interviews, interviewers ask certain questions at closing to reconfirm the facts, obtain previously undiscovered information, seek new evidence and maintain goodwill.

Assessment questions

If interviewers have reason to believe respondents are deceptive, they can ask certain types of hypothetical, nonaccusatory questions and then observe verbal and nonverbal responses to assess the respondents’ credibility to determine whether to seek admission-seeking questions.

Admission-seeking questions

Admission-seeking questions are reserved for those individuals whose culpability is reasonably certain. Interviewers ask these questions to clear innocent persons or encourage culpable persons to confess.

Questions in action

Regent Emeritus Joe Dervaes, CFE, ACFE Fellow, CIA, says at the beginning of interviews he asks the subjects several questions to gain a full understanding of their actions related to incriminating documents.

“I then ask the employee to tell me how they process the transactions, using legitimate transactions to confirm my understanding of the organization’s internal controls,” Dervaes says. “My purpose in doing this is to confirm my understanding of their involvement with the documents. But more importantly, this discussion lays the groundwork for subsequent questioning about fraudulent transactions.

“Once the employee has explained that they know how transactions are supposed to be processed, they can’t subsequently respond to follow-up questions by saying ‘I don’t know.’ Why? Because they’ve already told you that they do know,” says Dervaes, who retired in 2006 as the audit manager for special investigations at the Washington State Auditor’s Office.

Dervaes says he uses no more than one or two legitimate transactions in this initial discussion. “Then, I immediately begin presenting documents for fraudulent transactions, asking the individual to explain to me why these transactions are different than the legitimate ones we previously reviewed,” he says. “At this point, the individual may stop talking. But they often want to engage the interviewer with all kinds of explanations as to why the fraudulent transaction is the way it is.”

Dervaes says he then tells the employee that the documents demonstrate to him that funds are missing. “I follow this with a statement that the internal controls and the documents we have reviewed indicate that they are the individual who has misappropriated funds from the organization.” He says at that point, the interview will either terminate, or the individual will admit what they’ve been doing. “Either way, I conclude my remarks by informing the employee that our office will be issuing an audit report, which states that they have misappropriated funds.”

Mixing it up for results

The experienced CFEs we consulted know question typology thoroughly, but they also know when to mix it up. Regardless of the interviewer’s thorough preparation, few interviews are linear events.

Hal Humphreys, CFE, lead investigator for FIND Investigations, says during his interviews he typically tries “to work the conversation through all of the facts at my disposal. I try to do this as naturally as possible.

“I try to let the interviewee tell me facts before I start fleshing out the interview,” Humphrey says. “I will often let them tell their story from stem-to-stern and then go back with specific questions to cover points they either forgot or left out.”

Jenny Brawley, CFE, director of financial fraud investigations for Freddie Mac and an ACFE faculty member, says if she hasn’t gotten what she needs from a subject and wants them to talk longer she might “intentionally ‘misunderstand’ what they told me so they will continue to talk to set the record straight.

One trick I learned was to ask the interviewee to repeat his alleged actions in reverse chronological order. It’s harder to lie backwards.

Regent Emeritus Tiffany Couch, CFE, principal of Acuity Forensics, says that at the end of every interview she gives the subject her card and points out her cell number. “I then explain [to the subject] how many times people have left a[n interviewing] room and then remembered something when they were driving home, or washing their hair, and realized ‘I should have told Tiffany that.’

“This is my way of letting them know it’s safe to call me even after they leave. I can’t tell you how many people will leave work, or even wait a week or two, and email or call out of the blue to tell me something that’s on their mind that they were too afraid to tell me in person or at work,” Couch says.

What language is the body speaking?

Much has been made about subjects’ bodies speaking louder than their words. But is that emphasis overblown? Do we learn more from the fluid juxtaposition of what we hear and see rather than assigning percentages of discovery to both factors?

“I am an investigator. I am not a lie detector,” Humphreys says. “Unless the subject of the interview is my child, I have no real way to establish a baseline for responses. In my experience, people who claim to read body language and facial expressions are more apt to miss important information — commission or omission.

“I seriously rely on facts as much as possible,” Humphreys says. “If the subject relays information that I know to be contrary to fact, I dig deeper. I do pay attention to body language. I find that it is a great way to tell when I should ask more questions. But, again, I am not a human lie detector.”

“While it’s informative and educational to watch a video of someone’s non-verbal responses, you are focusing solely on the video and conducting the interview,” Brawley says.  “But in real life, when you are asking questions, listening to the answers and formulating the next follow-up question, it is a real art to also look for subtle non-verbal cues. When I conduct interviews, I stick to the more obvious ones: crossed arms, repeating the question, scratching the head, eye aversion, change in demeanor, etc.”

Subjects’ deception, moving toward admissions

Sometimes, even when the interviewer has presented the subject with overwhelming incriminating evidence, the subject will try to deceive and still won’t admit to the fraud. Regent Nancy Rich, CFE, a supervisory special agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, says the interviewer must challenge the subject that they aren’t truthful. “I always like to throw out the statement, ‘You know it’s a felony to lie to a federal agent’ if the interview is really going sideways,” Rich says. “I can also recommend someone to be placed in the grand jury to testify if there are doubts about the subject’s truthfulness.”

Brawley says that if she perceives the subject is deceiving her she’ll ask questions out of chronological order or in several different ways. “If I have documentation with me that proves the deception, I will show them and ask them if that helps their memory of the events. One trick I learned was to ask the interviewee to repeat his alleged actions in reverse chronological order. It’s harder to lie backwards,” Brawley says.

Ryan Hubbs, CFE, CCEP, CIA, says that after exhausting all approaches he sometimes will go for the last-ditch effort: the bluff.

“For some interviews, interviewers and cases, there may be procedural constraints to bluffing during an interview,” says Hubbs, a global audit manager for Schlumberger and a member of the ACFE faculty. “Some organizations also do not allow it and some interviewers may balk at the thought of someone using this tactic. But after having conducted hundreds and hundreds of interviews, I can attest to the fact there are a few rare instances where there is nothing left to do but bluff. Everything has been tried, every piece of evidence discussed. Or worse yet, there isn’t any evidence to directly confront the subject with. But here’s the catch: The bluff truly is a last-ditch effort and once you use it, the interview is over. Be ready to pack up and leave the room because if your bluff is called, you aren’t getting anything else.”

In a particularly serious case, Hubbs says he interviewed a subject for more than three hours without obtaining an admission or agreement on any piece of information that he displayed. “The subject had been suspected of being present in areas of the facility that were off limits and where large quantities of materials were missing,” Hubbs says. “While we had plenty of circumstantial evidence, he was able to give plausible, but weak, explanations and counter arguments of events.

“As the interview drew to a close, we really had nothing more than what we had started with: a whole lot of smoke and no fire,” he says. That’s when Hubbs decided to craft the bluff.

“Through a series of questions over about five minutes, I was able to get the subject to believe that there were hidden cameras in the area where the materials were taken, which there weren’t,” Hubbs says. “Once he believed that, I asked him what he was doing in the area since we could clearly see that he was there. I’d cast enough doubt in his mind about the cameras that he began to state what he was doing there, but he’d forgotten that he’d said hours before that he hadn’t been in the area at all.

“This thread was enough for us to pull on and help unravel all of his other lies,” Hubbs says. “We got admissions on most of our submissions, and he even signed a statement on his wrongdoings. Had I given up and not tried the bluff, the employee may have remained employed only to steal again another day.”

Dervaes says after a subject admits wrongdoing, they’re usually interested in what will happen to them next. “I then explain that our investigation has not been completed, but that we will issue an audit report when our work has been finished,” he says. “The organization’s representative, based upon their presence in the room and hearing the admission, is prepared to present the employee with a letter placing them on administrative leave pending completion of the audit.”

Dervaes says he also informs the employee that the local law enforcement agency and/or the county prosecuting attorney’s office will contact them once they’ve completed their investigation and review of our audit. “I tell them that it is in their best interests to cooperate with these officials to hopefully lessen the consequences of their actions,” Dervaes says. “A reduced sentence is often granted when the employee enters into a plea- bargaining agreement with the prosecutor, and a trial can be averted.”

Fraud examiners sometimes find that they need to become unofficial counselors after subjects’ confessions. Dervaes says that sometimes when a subject has admitted to a wrongdoing they might contemplate suicide. “When this occurs, I have often spent more time talking the individual out of suicide than I did showing them the evidence that proves they misappropriated funds from their organization,” he says.

“This is very difficult work and not to be taken lightly,” Dervaes says. “So, always be prepared for this situation. Under these circumstances, the organization contacts the employee’s spouse or other close relatives and asks them to come to the interview’s location.

“The organization explains to the family member what has happened before they meet with their relative. The individual is then released to the care of the family member, thus eliminating any potential liability in the event the employee does subsequently decide to harm themselves,” Dervaes says.

Learning experiences

Interviews could be the hardest part of a fraud examination. Documents and digital files don’t lie, resist, balk, withhold and obfuscate. But if you don’t talk to those who might know something about the fraud, you’re guaranteed to leave your case flapping in the wind.

You can take all the ACFE courses on interviewing, but your lessons won’t be complete until you begin practicing the real thing.

“The interviews I learn the most from are the ones where an attorney is either in the room or reviews the interview after I’m finished,” says Humphreys. “They almost always think of other questions that I didn’t consider. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know the law the way they do. So, I always find it educational to have a good attorney review my interviews. This is also the reason I try to leave the door open for follow-up interviews,” he says.

“Early in my career I was paired up with a senior agent from another [federal] agency,” Rich says. “I learned how he methodically went through every step of the scheme when interviewing the subject. At the end, he went back over every statement made by the subject to clarify or amend what was said. This was a great learning experience,” she says.

“All my interviews are learning experiences,” Rabon says. “They remind me constantly of how much more work I need to employ on my skill sets and just how much more I have to learn. For me, the interviewees that are the most resistant are the most didactic.”

Couch says that every interview is imperfect. “I will replay in my head every interview I’ve walked out of and wish I had done something better, or different,” she says. “Don’t beat yourself up too badly — just take what you learned and do better next time!”

Dick Carozza, CFE, is editor-in-chief of Fraud Magazine. His email address is: dcarozza@ACFE.com.