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By now, you’ve probably heard about deepfakes. Maybe you followed the story of Taylor Swift, who was targeted by deepfakes that appeared to show her endorsing Donald Trump, or maybe you’ve seen concerns raised about how deepfakes of politicians could impact our next election here in Canada.
I recently presented a webinar with my colleagues, Janice Rubin and Elizabeth Bingham, called, “How to be a Good Second Reader.” The webinar was aimed at those who, like me, review investigation reports.
La plainte est généralement l’acte originel de toute enquête en milieu de travail. Elle est autrement dit le signal d’alerte qui active une série de mécanismes depuis l’évaluation de son sérieux par l’employeur jusqu’à l’ultime décision sur la manière de l’adresser.
The complaint is typically the originating act of any workplace investigation. It is the “code red” that activates a series of mechanisms, from the assessment of its seriousness by the employer, to the ultimate decision on how to address it.
Writing about credibility is one of the most challenging aspects of workplace investigation reports. As someone who reviews a lot of reports, I find that investigators usually have a good sense of who is credible and who is not, but they can struggle to write about how they assessed credibility. This is especially true of newer investigators.
In the course of a workplace investigation, it is not unusual to encounter a respondent who simply denies the allegations, without offering any further information or explanation. While a simple denial may sometimes be a sufficient response to an allegation, there are instances where there is seemingly more to the story than what the respondent is offering.
It is not out of the ordinary for our firm to conduct workplace investigations involving very senior leaders – presidents, CEOs, senior vice-presidents, partners (in the case of law and accounting firms, for example), school principals, and even board members. While complaints against these individuals may not be the norm, they certainly do exist.
The assessment of credibility and reliability is always a central part of an investigator’s work. My colleague, Chantel Levy, wrote an excellent overview of the considerations a decision maker should bear in mind when making a finding of credibility, including consistency, corroborative evidence, plausibility, and motive.
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