April 27, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG, VA - Lies come in many guises and can ultimately ruin the best reputations or destroy even the biggest corporations. But certain behaviors are common to liars of all cultures, according to Business Intelligence Advisors (BIA) and with the proper training an interviewer can learn to spot them.
On April 27, 2007, the Master of Accounting (MAcc) Program at The Mason School of Business sponsored a workshop by BIA on the Detection of Deception. BIA, a firm whose employees deliver a collective 400 years of interviewing experience and hail from backgrounds that include the FBI and CIA, was formed five years ago in response to the recent spate of business scandals. The Big Four accounting firms and a large variety of corporations call on BIA to help their auditors and managers recognize false statements and discern when only partial information is being given.
Participants not only honed their observation skills but also learned a system that allows them to focus on the key signs of untruthful behavior in interviews. During the afternoon, teams worked through a case study (based on a fictitious company) in order to transform their healthy skepticism of the stated facts into a sophisticated interviewing methodology.
MAcc student Mike Sawyer, soon to enter a career in auditing with KPMG, argued that “this should be required for all accounting students.” MBA student Chris Cioffi agreed that the training was invaluable. “I don’t want to be an auditor,” he said, “but as a future general manager, I want to understand enough about this issue to catch problems at my company before they blow up into something big.”
And how did the students fare in their roles as investigators? “You are all doing really well,” observed workshop leader and (22 year) FBI veteran Mike Floyd during the final case. “We’ve trained over 12,000 senior managers over the last few years and you’re asking questions that are as good as than many of theirs. Your professors are getting you to think about the right things.”
To find out more about BIA, visit www.biadvisors.com.
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