More on Investigation Notes
Ed provided a comment to my last post on workplace investigations regarding the idea of disposing notes once the final report is prepared. He raises an interesting point - how can the HR person who destroyed the notes prove that the summary report really is a truthful summary of the investigation? He further notes that Plaintiff's counsel would have a field day with this.
His comment points out what may not be obvious. The internal HR person is naturally in a position to be challenged based upon the premise that he/she is not truly objective. One plaintiff's attorney I know referred to internal investigation done by insiders or defense counsel as one big "white wash" or an attempt to cover up as much as possible. Those of us who do investigations as outsiders build our reputations on a history of being objective, and not being beholden to others. In other words, it makes no difference to me what I find out in an investigation, I'm looking for the truth. I have no stake in the outcome.
In connection with investigatory notes, unfortunately I have seen them do more harm than good. For example, I've seen people take notes for some but not all interviewees. I've seen some notes type written, some hand written, some written on hotel napkins, etc., etc. The problem becomes that at the end of the day the investigator cannot recall who was interviewed, in what order, for how long, about what and cannot explain inconsistencies in the interviews (i.e. why did you take hand written notes for some, and not for others?). The result is that the investigation looks more like a patch work quilt that can be easily challenged for it's seeming lack of inconsistency, inferring that perhaps something else was going on.
I'd love to hear more thoughts on the subject of notes....
A little late to the party, but I generally advise investigators to maintain ALL VERSIONS of their notes. There is nothing wrong with "cleaning up" notes hastily made (we have all had a long-sought witness catch us on the fly)as long as we can demonstrate the root document and the alterations from version to version are sensible and do not involve massive revisions, but enhancements or clarifications. I also recommend that the timing of these "clean ups" be carefully recorded. Revising "napkin notes" one hour after the originals is certainly better than six weeks later, when memory is no longer fresh.
Conversely, I recommend destroying prior drafts of reports == as these are by definition, inaccurate, incomplete or ineffective in stating the facts you want the reader to understand.