Page 38 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

4CHAPTER
Signs of Deception

The total amount of evil in a person remains constant

Introduction

Finding the truth is a seven-stage process (see Mind Map 3).
This chapter examines how a liar leaves clues as a direct result of his conscious objectives

and, much more importantly, scattered unconsciously in ways he never intended.

MILLER’S LAW1 he has said is the complete truth and then
ask yourself what it is true of.
In order to understand what a person is
telling you, you must first accept that what

The bottom line is that there are so many clues that we cannot consciously remember them
all and have to rely on our subconscious to warn us. Once we get the warning – which may
be as weak as an intuition – we have to decide if the matter is important and, if it is, to elevate
our suspicions to a conscious level and deal with them.

Thus dealing with deception is a three-stage process:

• Let our feelings and intuition run free (that is, don’t immediately suppress them and test
the story against the clues you can consciously remember).

• Decide whether the suspected deception is important: if it is not, just enjoy it. But if it is
important, take a conscious decision to deal with it.

• Adapt the cunning plan to suit the circumstances.

The Mind Maps in this chapter summarize everything and Chapters 6 and 7 set out the meth-
odology for handling tough interviews where fraud or other gross deception is suspected.
Working copies of the Mind Maps can be downloaded from www.cobasco.com.

Deciding that a person is not telling the truth is the easy part.
Dealing with it is more difficult

1 George Miller, US psychologist