Interviewing Techniques

Part of my job is to ask, "Do you know of any fraud or suspected fraud within your entity?"

In order to ask this question and other questions just like it properly I took a class about fraud interviewing techniques. It was a totally awesome class. It was 8 hours long. It had power point slides, schedules, and the best thing of all - role playing.


I detest role playing. I didn't play it with friends, I didn't play it with my imaginary friends, and I certainly didn't figure it out as an adult. 

One of the techniques is to start off with small talk and help someone else feel at ease. I can do small talk if required, I just hate it. I can even pretend I like it. But in general stuff just comes out of my mouth at the best possible moments and then the stares happen.

They stare like, "Oh my God, did she really just say that, out loud?" "Was she joking, I can't tell if she is joking."

A friend of mine once informed me that I can make being polite into a thoroughly mean and degrading experience for the other person and they walk away thinking "What the hell just happened? She wasn't mean, but it wasn't nice, what the hell?"

So yeah, me role playing, with people I don't know, will never really know, don't want to know is gonna be good times for all.

So we had to practice small talk. The exercise was to visualize that we were in the office with the interviewee.  We were to pretend (did I mention I don't pretend well in an organized setting?) the office space and ask about something interesting in it. The instructor, bless her heart, tried so hard and recommended photos or pictures displayed were good items to ask about.


So I got to be the interviewer first. It went great. I asked about an imaginary photo and the interviewee had the small talk gene. She was just spinning stuff out and it was going so well.


Then we switched roles and I was the interviewee and it went like this:

Interviewer, "That is a really nice photo, who is it?" as she points to an imaginary wall behind me. It was before lunch, I was tired, this class was beyond all I could have hoped and dreamed of, and I just wanted to eat, so I say "It is my aunt."

The interviewer looked relieved, I was going to play along nicely. So she continued, "You look a lot like her, how often do you get to see her?"

Now my mouth opened and what came out I can't explain, "I don't get to see her, she is dead."

In real life my aunt is alive and well. I see her a few times a year and we get along just fine. So I don't know why I killed her in the interview, but the words were already out. The funny thing about talking aloud, is there are no take backs.

The interviewer looked stunned,  her mouth opened and closed with that fish gulping thing people do and I just started laughing. I couldn't help it. I tried. I really did.

I felt bad, sorta. Ok, not really, it was just too damn funny.