Workplace Investigations - Tip #15
Why You Need an Outside Third Party Investigator - Someone once told me that it's hard to do something for many years (in my case north of 20) and not develop some strong opinions..... As an HR professional before I went to law school at night, I always believed it was my obligation as an HR professional to conduct the investigations for my company. Believing I was competent and could be neutral, I had always been taught that it was an appropriate role for the internal HR professional to conduct investigations and that other people would see it that way. All the legal reasons aside, I began to rethink that idea when I was involved in a highly politically charged investigation at one of my companies. Without going into the details, I found that upon learning of the allegation, major sectors of the organization took competing sides. The very fact that an investigation had to be done resulted in incredible opposition by some powerful players in the organization. Who was stuck in the middle? ME.
That became a turning point for me and I began to question the idea of investigations, their neutrality, the political environment within organizations - all aside from the legal issues which I believe support the use of third party investigators anyway.
I do a fair amount of speaking and writing on the subject and my most recent article should suffice to provide a relatively detailed view on why I take a non-traditional view of how investigations are handled and the roles of various parties. Happy reading: Download hraj_0805_investigations.pdf
Your post really resonates with a number of situations that I have had the opportunity to observe. Obvious examples are cases of discrimination, harrassment or frauds. In addition, (just as in Court) the appearance of impartiality and "justice beeing seen to be done" can go a long way to easing tensions among all parties involved in such serious matters.