Instructional Courses

Investigative Interviewing Course

Investigative Interviewing Course (IIC) is our company’s cornerstone and most fundamental training course. The emphasis is to incorporating a streamlined combination of interviewing and social influence skills with deception detecting techniques essential to aid the interviewer in obtaining the maximum amount of reliable, accurate, and thorough usable information. This training endeavors to enhance and promote efficient information gathering and veracity determination while providing methods of preserving relationships and minimizing adverse affect. The course material is designed and continually up-dated to meet and exceed the most dynamic challenges of today’s global milieu and is based on the most up-to-date reliable scientific research and accepted field application.

This interdisciplinary training consists primarily of two distinct skillsets — interpersonal communication skills and detection of deception.

Interpersonal Communication Skills:

The interaction between persons is an extremely dynamic, interpersonal event even without the stress of inquisition. A person being interviewed, especially if deceptive, must continually weigh and evaluate the behaviors of an interviewer often editing their responses increasing cognitive load. Consequently, clients in this training learn how to integrate interview methodologies with proven deception detection techniques as validated in contemporary scientific literature and proven effective in field application. Clients learn to employ non-confrontation tactics designed to maximize discovery of crucial information that often remains elusive and undetected. Methodical development and deployment of well-crafted inquiry coupled with effective interpersonal and social influence skills will encourage cooperation and compliance generating truthfulness to the most sensitive or uncomfortable topics, even among resistant persons. Effective interpersonal communication skills can produce profoundly positive impact on significant business, professional and personal decisions and, especially today, the ability to simultaneously maintain, even improve, relationships with persons being interviewed is invaluable and expected.

Detection of Deception:

In this segment as validated by the world’s leading researchers and field practitioners, clients learn to identify reliable verbal and non-verbal cues that indicate individuals:

• may be willfully omitting relevant, pertinent information;
• may be purposely deceiving with provided information; or
• may be unsure about the veracity of the provided information.

This ability to evaluate and assess accurately the veracity of others is applicable to all forms of personal and professional interaction. Not knowing the facts could have a significant negative impact on your future and success.

The standalone value of our IIC cannot be overemphasized. As such, it is prerequisite to most all other services offered by our company.

Length: This course of instruction is offered in various formats ranging from an informational presentation of 1 to 2 hours to an 80-hour trainer-the-trainer program. It is designed to permit customization to facilitate delivery in most any venue regardless of audience, size, and time constraints. Please contact our company for a customized program to meet your specific requirements.

Prerequisite Courses: None

Enhanced Investigative Interviewing Course

This course of instruction is a valuable add-on and builds upon the Investigative Interviewing Course (IIC). This expanded program is based on the latest psychological and physiological research in the areas of human behavior, investigative interviewing and detection of deception. Clients will expand their knowledge and practice of interviewing, social influence, and deception detection with additions of demonstrations, multimedia examples, and practical exercises. Participants will gain greater understanding of interpersonal skills directed at persuasion often necessary to secure admissions and confessions, as appropriate, from reluctant or uncooperative subjects. It will be presented with real world application to facilitate clear understanding for immediate implementation thereby increasing clients’ self-satisfaction and performance with increased opportunities for success.

Length: This course of instruction is offered in various formats and is designed to permit customization to facilitate delivery in most any venue. Class size is limited to permit maximization of content delivery and learning opportunity. Please contact our company for specific class-size information and a customized program to meet your specific requirements.

Prerequisite Courses: IIC

Traffic Stops, the Law, and Court 

The 2015 Supreme Court case, Rodriguez v. Illinois, tells officers that they can detain a person during a traffic stop for only as long as it reasonably takes to deal with the purpose of the stop; the traffic offense. Unless the officer can get a valid consent to search, or sufficiently develop either reasonable suspicion or probable cause that there is ongoing criminal conduct during that timeframe, the officer must allow the person to depart.  Further detention in order to bring in a drug dog, requires that the officer articulate “reasonable suspicion” that the driver has contraband in the vehicle.  What are the rules and best investigative strategies to assist an officer in evaluating and developing “reasonable suspicion” within that limited period of time?

The focus of this course is both the legal issues that arise in these situations and how the officer can potentially develop reasonable suspicion through the interaction with the driver.  Attendees will learn how to develop rapport with the driver, how to effectively engage the driver in conversation, how to spot deception, and how to effectively use that deception to potentially develop “reasonable suspicion” necessary to justify extending the detention.  The instruction includes multiple videos of officer stops and roadside interviews, as well as a mock “Motion to Suppress” focused on justifying the detention of a driver.

Length: This course of instruction is offered in a 16-hour training program. It is designed to permit minor customization to facilitate delivery of the most current relevant case laws on traffic stops and related 4th Amendment issues coupled with the latest empirical research in human behavior for purposes of creating the best and highest potential for investigatvie and prosecutorial success post-training.

Prerequisite Courses: None

Cognitive Interviewing Course

Cognitive interviewing is a unique, advanced interview skills course that enhances and maximizes a client’s ability to collect critical and truthful information in a multitude of differing venues. Capitalizing on psychological aspects of social influence, memory, and active listening, the course teaches a low-key, interpersonal approach to effectively obtaining truthful and actionable information from fully willing and cooperative individuals such as victims and witnesses to reluctant or difficult individuals such as potential defendants and suspects, without damaging relationships. This non-coercive technique is not only extremely effective in law enforcement investigative matters, but it has also been effective in securing derogatory information during national security screenings, evoking critical information from employees in the hiring process and candidates being considered for critical promotions, and senior management officials suspected of fraudulent activities, to name a few. Equally at home in the boardroom, the courtroom, in depositions, the exam room and the interview room these advanced techniques elicit more reliable information, help interviewers, finders of fact, and adjudicators assess the likely impact of a deceptive person’s strategy and intentions while leading to more confident and accurate decision making.

Length: This course of instruction is offered in various formats ranging from an informational presentation of 1 to 2 hours to a 16-hour training program. It is designed to permit customization to facilitate delivery in most any venue regardless of audience size and time constraints. Please contact our company for a customized program to meet your specific requirements.

Prerequisite Courses: None; however, attendance of IIC would be extremely beneficial

Human Behavior in the Courtroom Course

This truly unique course has been specifically designed for attorneys, litigators, and mediators and will improve their ability to interview and prepare witnesses, debrief cooperating defendants, conduct cross examinations, select jurors, present trial evidence, and communicate cases more effectively and powerfully while continually evaluating the veracity of others. This course examines various aspects of human behavior and social influence and incorporates these studies into every facet of case preparation and presentation and any judicial proceedings, hearings and depositions.

Some topics discussed during this course include:

• Voir dire
• Deposition
• Courtroom Dynamics
• Personality types
• Recognizing evidentiary value and increasing impact
• Planning the Interview: Coordinating for Success
• Eliciting Information: Creating An environment for Truthfulness
• Cognitive Interviewing for the Judiciary: Preserving Informational Integrity
• Witness Preparation: Avoiding Obstacles and Surprises
• Compelling Cooperation: Securing the Truth

This course is a truly inimitable blend of the latest scientific research of topic relevance and various contemporary interviewing techniques and methodologies complemented with psychological concepts and theories and studies of anatomy and physiology. The paramount emphasis of this course is interpersonal communication skills and the detection of deception and their correlation essential for success.

Note: This training course for attorneys is also available as Custom In-House instruction.  Please contact our company to customize a course that will best meet the needs of your firm.  CLE hours can range from 1 hour for a luncheon speaker to 3 hours for the typical 4-hour course.

Length: This course of instruction is offered in various formats ranging from an informational presentation of 1 hour to a 24-hour program. It is designed to permit customization to facilitate delivery in most any venue regardless of audience size and time constraints. Please contact our company for a customized program to meet your specific requirements.

Prerequisite Courses: None; however, attendance of IIC would be extremely beneficial