Should You PUKE? Deep Listening in Workplace Interviews
To the untrained, the skills needed to carry out effective interviews in a workplace investigation are simple – find a room, ask questions, then get the answers. Yet as any professional workplace investigator knows, the quantity and quality of information that you glean in any investigative interview can vary significantly depending upon the techniques that are used. The field of interview techniques is vast, and the excellent ‘free recall’ approach is just one of the methods that can be particularly useful to workplace investigators. Forensic psychologist Dr Becky Milne from the University of Portsmouth coined the term PUKE – Pure Unadulterated Knowledge Extraction – to highlight the essence of the free recall approach. As the terminology infers, this is a method of investigative interviewing which in many ways requires little or no questioning from the workplace investigator. Sound odd? Read on to learn more about the benefits of silence in the interview room.
Setting the stage
An effective interview based upon PUKE – or free recall – requires an incredible amount of preparation beforehand. Milne herself states that the end goal of such a technique is essentially the no-question interview, where a witness simply tells their story. To set the scene for such hands-off elicitation of evidence, first ensure that the witness is comfortable and unlikely to be distracted. It’s amazing how thirst, no tissues, nerves or nature’s call can break the flow of a free recall interview setting! Adopt a demeanour that is professional but not overly formal, and explain the purpose for the interview. The information that you provide at this point can be crucial to the extraction of high-quality data and evidence throughout the substance of the interview. For example, summarise your knowledge to date, such as: “From what I understand, there seems to have been some sort of altercation in the lunchroom on Friday.” Then try to convey that there is no rush, and that you are looking forward to hearing their version of events.
Total recall
Humans like to talk. And professionals like to talk a lot! So the art of free recall or PUKE interviewing involves the workplace investigator actively redirecting that normal talkative energy into deep listening. Having set the scene, you can now take a couple of tacks. One is to keep your body language open and simply ask: “Can you tell me what you recall about the event?” A prequel to this is to first take the witness through a relaxation task, along the lines of “Close your eyes… picture the lunchroom in your mind. See all the details of the room. Recall last Friday, when you went in there. Now let me know what you experienced next” or similar. Once your witness is talking, there are a few excellent PUKE techniques to keep the flow going. Make sure that you maintain open body language as far as possible. You may be taking notes if a recording is not underway – but do try to maintain non-confrontational eye contact. Interestingly, adult humans can feel uncomfortable simply talking without any prompting questions. Yet the more you can keep the witnesses narrative going without interruption, the better. Remember you want ‘Pure Unadulterated Knowledge Extraction’. Too many inquisitive questions can be just the adulteration that you don’t need! Try some encouraging gestures and nodding if the witness seems to have stalled. A simple “Yes?” or “And then…?” can help to move things along.
Should you try PUKE-ing?
Absolutely. In fact, adopting a well-constructed free recall interview can be the difference between a useful and a flawed workplace investigation report. Should the matter later go to court, the standard in Briginshaw comes fully into play. That is, the existence of enough low-quality evidence can mean that the balance of probabilities will not be met in some cases. Free recall interviewing reduces the chances of procedural fairness being hampered, in that the PUKEd information flows freely from the witness. It is so easy to have the appearance of bias and pre-judgement enter unwittingly into questioning, particularly if the witness has clammed up, or you have allowed your frustration to show. This might just be via a leading question: “At what time did you hit David in the lunch room?” Or, it might be through an inadvertent show of bias: “Well, three other workers seem to think that’s a bit silly – you?” There certainly is an art to conducting an investigative interview in the workplace context. By applying skills such as the free recall PUKE approach, the quality and consistency of workplace investigation interviews and reports can be vastly elevated.
Obtain cognitive interview strategies and learn how to PUKE by booking a place on one of our short courses. 2015 dates for our Conducting Workplace Investigations – Advanced and Investigative Interviewing courses are available now.
