For the person being investigated
You've been told there's an investigation. Here is what actually happens next.
A preparation tool for the person on the receiving end — built by someone who spent thirty years on the other side of the table.
Most people find out on a Tuesday.
They need to be somewhere on Thursday. Nobody explains what the meeting is, what will be asked, whether to write anything down first, or what happens afterwards. So they spend two days searching, and find either law firm advertising or strangers on forums.
This is the other thing. It explains how a properly conducted investigation works, walks you through the interview you're about to sit in, and helps you build the one document that matters most: a clear, dated account of what actually happened.
What this is, and what it isn't
It does
- Explain the stages of an investigation and where you are in them
- Walk you through the structure of the interview before you're in it
- Help you build a dated chronology of events
- Show you what to gather, and where it usually lives
- Help you write a clean account in your own words
It doesn't
- Tell you what your legal rights are
- Tell you whether you have a claim
- Interpret your employer's policies for you
- Tell you what to say, or put words in your account
- Replace a lawyer when you need one
Why the distinction matters
An investigation is a process with a shape. People go wrong in it not because they lack a clever argument, but because they walk in without a timeline, explain before they describe, and contradict something they said in a corridor three weeks earlier without realising it.
None of that requires legal advice to fix. It requires knowing what the room is for.
Or just read
Plain explanations, free, without a sign-up.
If one of these answers your question and you never come back, that is a good outcome.
A written account is the most consequential document you will produce in an investigation, and most people give it less care than a spoken answer. Here is how it should be built.
The meeting has a structure, and it is deliberate. Here is what each phase is for, what the investigator is doing, and the four mistakes that account for most of the damage people do to themselves.
Some questions are designed to gather information. Others are designed to work on you. Here is how to tell them apart, what each one is built to produce, and why the answer to all of them is the same.