Investigator Chronicles Episode 4 is live! – Watch Now
The importance of neutrality within a workplace investigation is oft-discussed and, at this point, well understood. I frequently tell participants in our Workplace Investigation Fundamentals workshop that to undertake a fair investigation they need to be capable of being open to the possibility that any person they interview – complainant, respondent, or witness – is telling them the truth.
In Episode 4 of Investigator Chronicles, I talk to child forensic interviewing specialist, Dayna Boyko, about her expertise in interviewing children. Dayna spent 25 years in the Toronto Police Service, 16 of which were spent working on the Internet Child Exploitation Team, where she became an expert in interviewing child survivors and witnesses of sexual violence.
Recently, while discussing investigations with my partner Christine Thomlinson for the first instalment of the Investigator Chronicles, she asked me about the most difficult investigation I had ever conducted.
“If you can’t write out your mandate in a short and simple paragraph, don’t start.”
When delivering our Workplace Investigation Fundamentals sessions, this is how I start the discussion on mandate. Simply put, an investigator’s mandate is the thing (or things) that they are being asked to do, the decision (or decisions) that they are being asked to make.
Last week, our colleague Dana Campbell wrote a terrific blog entitled “Four Tips for Conducting Workplace Investigations Amidst the COVID-19 Crisis.” It contained some excellent advice including the use of technology to replace face-to-face interviews that are part of our investigation process.
We have all had a chance to put Dana’s advice into use this week as we are all investigating and working remotely. For the most part, this way of working has been successful. However, we have had some unanticipated mishaps, which we share with you below. And, in the spirit of working in new ways, this is the first RT blog written collaboratively, so you will hear the voices of different members of our team.
