Chapter 16: Interviewing for Cause: When Interviewing Is About Life and Death

The aim of this chapter is to explore clean language interviewing (CLI) for incidents where a serious injury or fatality (SIF) has occurred and to identify what difference this type of interviewing can make where high risk and high efficacy must co-exist. The primary focus is non-criminal SIF investigative interviews in North American utilities and the use of CLI in root cause (RC) accident investigations.

Nearly 900,000 serious injury or fatality accidents occur annually in the US, which are quite literally a matter of life and death for individuals, distressing for loved ones with grave consequences for organisations in which they occur. Despite the gravity of these accidents, training for interviewers is woefully lacking. This chapter describes how 11 experienced root cause analysts conducted investigative interviews and reports on their experience before and after learning skills in clean language interviewing.

Findings show that when investigators learn how to ask cleaner or non-content leading questions, there is a higher level of confidence in the data elicited. The analysts noted several advantages of conducting interviews with clean language including: appreciably easing interviewee's response to questions; creating an environment of trust and non-blame for injured individuals and witnesses; and a non-interrogative approach that provided psychological and emotional safety. Transcripts of an interview prior to and post training in clean language interviewing methods illustrate the difference that questions make. The chapter concludes by highlighting some benefits and challenges of using clean language interviewing in serious injury or fatality interviews.