Investigative Interviewing Workshop

Learn vital techniques to uncover the information you need.

Have confidence that your interviews will reveal all the information you need to make a decision or recommendation

What makes Skillset's approach different?

  • Serious training, not passive seminars
  • Learning by doing. We'll give your team new ideas, but they'll put them into action right away
  • Realistic scenarios everyone can relate to. (It'll be like practising in the real world, but with safe opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them.)
  • The Skillset trainer is at the leading edge in the world for training in investigative interviewing
  • We make the training challenging and fun.

Let's make use of the best research on investigative interviewing and related topics such as detecting deception, ethics in investigations, building rapport, questioning techniques, memory, the psychology of witnesses and suspects, forensic linguistics and personality.

Skillset uses the PEACE method, but that's just the start

Professional interviewing has come a long way since the old list of questions approach.

PEACE is the acronym that describes the contemporary framework for interviews. Each letter describes a stage of the interview. The framework is designed to help you move through the various stages of an interview more effectively.

But we can add much more to the PEACE framework.

Let's teach your team how to get the most out of every stage of the interview. They will learn the most up to date techniques including cognitive interviewing and conversation management. (They are considered best-practice internationally.)

Would the training be designed for us?

Yes, that's the advantage of in-house training. Let's make the most of it.

We will make a point of understanding and including the relevant legislation for your activities. We will develop scenarios your team will find realistic and useful.

What could the training include?

It's your workshop, so we'll design it to match your needs.

Most often, we help interviewers:

  • recognise their individual styles for interviewing and understand their strengths and limitations
  • prepare thoroughly for their interviews so that they can maintain control throughout the event. (We'll show them how to set the tone and reduce potential interruptions by lawyers or support people.)
  • build rapport, put people at ease, remove tension and create a co-operative atmosphere so that the interviewee wants to confide in them. (Those valuable skills also help them establish a baseline for the interviewee's body language so that they can recognise changes in their behaviour as the interview progresses.)
  • run a cognitive interview with the PEACE method and use it to add structure and value to the interviews they do
  • develop advanced listening and questioning techniques so that they can keep track of information, clarify ambiguities, recognise prompts and drill down to specifics - all the skills needed to get and test quality information
  • establish what deception really looks like and what the research says about brain behaviour and lying
  • discover useful ways of responding to lies, omissions and half-truths
  • use conversation management and cognitive loading tools to add subtle pressure to the interviewee and control the flow of information
  • close the interview well
  • evaluate the outcome of the interview and how it contributes to an investigation.

We would record their practice interviews on camera and provide specific feedback.

Skillset's Alana Billingham

Skillset’s specialist, Alana Billingham, is at the leading edge in the world for training in investigative interviewing. She has attended a master class in the UK and maintains international connections through her membership of the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group, ('IIIRG' is the organisation at the forefront of developing new techniques and knowledge in investigative interviewing.)