ACCT 3303 · Investigation Methodology · Evidence, Interviews, Document Review

Led by Felix Aubrey Sharpley Simulacrum

1. Module 3 ○ Open

   Investigation Methodology · Evidence, Interviews, Document Review

   Led by Felix Aubrey Sharpley Simulacrum

   The question

   Investigation methodology — the structured discipline of evidence preservation, document review, and interview technique. The module covers the seven steps of a forensic investigation (scoping, evidence preservation, data extraction, document review, interviews, hypothesis testing, report), modern eDiscovery and technology-assisted review, the PEACE interview model used by UK police and forensic interviewers, the contemporaneous-documentation discipline, and the chain-of-custody preservation that protects evidence for later legal proceedings.

   Outcome

   The student can plan an investigation methodology including evidence preservation, document review, and interviews; can apply the PEACE model to a witness or subject interview; and can articulate the chain-of-custody and contemporaneous-documentation discipline. (Investigation methodology)

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   Practice scenarios

   Interviewing the Regional Director

   You plan and conduct the formal interview with a regional director suspected of operating a kickback scheme through three suppliers connected to his wife's brother. The work tests whether you can apply the PEACE model under realistic conditions — building from agreed facts to challenge, presenting evidence at the right moment, recording responses contemporaneously, and pausing the interview when the subject requests his own solicitor.

   Your goals

   • Plan the interview using PEACE: pre-interview prepare a topic guide covering general expense practice (build agreed-fact base) before specific suppliers; identify the key evidence to be presented at challenge stage (the three suppliers' Companies House records, the wife's-brother connection, the absence of supporting POs); set the interview at the company's solicitor's offices (neutral ground; legal-privilege protection); have the solicitor present.
   • Conduct the engage-and-explain phase: confirm interviewee identity, explain that the interview is part of a workplace investigation, confirm legal advice has been offered (employment-law context), confirm contemporaneous note will be taken.
   • Conduct the account phase: open-ended questions on his expense practice, the suppliers he typically uses, his approval process; let him commit to positions.
   • Conduct the clarification phase: probe for specifics on the three named suppliers; ask how he selected them, what services they provide, the relationship with the director-of-record.
   • Conduct the challenge phase: present the Companies House evidence, the wife's-brother connection, the missing POs; observe response.
   • Conduct closure: invite further account, summarise, indicate next steps.
   • Frame the interview as an 800-word interview-plan memo plus a 1,200-word post-interview note (illustrative based on hypothetical responses).

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