Implausibility on the Margins

The Complainant alleged that their manager made a series of unwelcome verbal comments about their body and brushed against them from behind, repeatedly, in a manner they found to be purposeful and unwelcome. That was the complaint.

It wasn't the interview - not all of it.

After building some rapport with the Complainant and support person, we walked through the chain of events, from initial acquaintance with a new manager, to the formal complaint. All of the incidents were either unwelcome compliments perceived as flirting, or an approach to the Complainant's workstation to chat in which the manager leaned in closely enough to the Complainant's workstation that they touched the Complainant with an arm or leg. The 'incidental' contact progressed in intimacy over time.

In the Complainant interview, they were nervous but forthcoming, and few prompts were required to obtain the narrative and necessary details. Then, the Complainant described going into a smaller room with the Respondent, getting a file, and leaving. The Complainant proceeded on in the narrative to other incidents.

Hold on here.

"Tell me more about the room you went into? Did you enter together? Do you know why the Respondent entered that space too?"

But there was nothing there. They went in, they came out.

Plausibility in workplace investigations isn't only a matter of whether the major incidents are logically consistent with the available evidence - we also need to consider the plausibility of narrative gaps in the Complainant's statement. Narrative gaps can often be explained logically and mundanely: the Complainant wanted to get to something more important in their story; they're nervous, jumping from topic to topic; they began reciting all interactions with the Respondent, both relevant and routine.

Respectful, curious follow up questions can help us fill in these gaps and ensure there wasn't something meaningful left out. Sometimes, the Complainant wants to tell the full story, but hold themselves back at the 'last moment', and simply gloss over something difficult or painful, even when it's vital to the investigation and their allegations.

We circled back to the time spent with the Respondent in a small space, alone, at the end of the interview. "You know, I'm just going over our conversation in my own mind before we wrap up, and if I remember correctly, it was important for you to tell me about entering that room with the Respondent. What made that moment important to you?"

They finally gave themself permission to share the real story, when it was framed in terms of that anecdote having been important to tell me in the first go-round. It made all the difference, and reframed the investigation completely with significant new misconduct alleged.

The cliche of thoroughness in any investigation is 'leaving no stone unturned'. An investigator's eye can be focused on turning over the big stones from every angle, but sometimes, taking a second glance at an unusual pebble, slightly askew, reveals a whole new landscape.

Complainants sometimes use the initial complaint process as a trust test of their organization, explaining certain sanitized parts of their concern, but preserving elements of their dignity or shielding aspects of trauma they may not have been willing to share at first or with an internal colleague. While this might reveal an inconsistency between an initial complaint and a subsequent interview that negatively impacts a party's credibility, the credibility assessment rests on a more complete analysis than the mere existence of the inconsistency.

Takeaways:

• Note interactions in a narrative that might be plausible in isolation, but implausible in the context of the totality of the complaint.

• Focus on the allegations, but listen for additional allegations not threshed out in the original complaint letter/report that the Complainant might only be hinting at.

• Consider running back through any narratives of the interview that remain implausible at the end of your interview, if after some initial prompting during the initial narrative of the complaint a story still lacks the ring of completeness.

• Differentiate between inconsistencies that negatively impact a party's credibility from those that coherently expand upon their initial complaint.

• Take a trauma-informed approach to the inconsistency, probing neutrally. Avoid an accusatory tone.

  
  

Identifying details have been removed or altered to preserve the confidentiality of parties in workplace investigations.