Hamlet’s Mind

An Interviewing Focused Newsletter 

Hamletsmind.com 

Hamlet’s Mind 

Issue 51 January 2017 

The weak interviewer becomes angry at interviewee resistance. 

A good interviewer objectifies interviewee resistance. 

A consummate interviewer utilizes interviewee resistance. 

Before we get started 

Well, here we are at the threshold of a new year. First off, all the best to you and yours in 2017. 

Also, thank you, the readership, out there in the field, for hanging with me. Some of you have 

been onboard for (if my math is correct), eight and a half years. I am looking forward to our 

collaborative efforts at examining the interviewing process as we go forward. There’s lots to talk 

about. 

To those I will see face to face in my classes this year, I am looking forward to meeting you or 

seeing you again. To those, finding themselves with me in webinars, online classes or podcasts, 

while we may not meet face-to-face, just yet, I am certain the connection will still be there just as 

readily. 

As with most people, the new year affords a time for reflection and preparation – where we have 

been and where we are going. I have a good deal of book updates, new courses and new books 

on the table in various stages of completion, and as it has always been with me, as articulated by 

the poet Robert Browning, my reach more than exceeds my grasp. And I am good with that. It 

makes life interesting, challengingly active and wonderfully complicated. 

Now, as for you, I am always interested to know those plans and aspirations you have for 

yourself. If you know me, you know that anything I can do to assist you in your endeavors, is a 

pleasure. We live in a rapidly changing world and the interviewing process is reflective of that 

change. What is valid today might not be so applicable tomorrow. You all are going to be 

conducting interviews long after I have “Harleyed off” on the road to see what else is out there 

and meet more of the vast array of wonderful characters having the love of the ride in common. 

Working with you now, on all levels, is my opportunity to touch the future. Thank you for that. 

Lastly, I have one word of advice. If you have not, join the local chapter of the Association of 

Certified Fraud Examiners. Get involved. Meet and get to know the other members. 

Contribute. It is your career and yours alone. Make it happen. Ready? Then, let’s get moving. 

Don Rabon, CFE dwrabon@msn.com 828-606-9167 Page 1



I am currently in the process of completing my 2017 calendar. Note: The training fee for the 

five-day courses offered through the NC Community Colleges is $125.00 and for the two-day 

courses, $70.00. This partial 2017 list does not include the training I am doing for specific entities, 

webinars or online classes. 

Advanced Interviewing: The Concept of Persuasion: Feb. 6-7, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

Surviving the first three minutes of your interview: Mar. 6, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

Interviewing and Interrogation, Apr. 3 – 7, Raleigh, – Open enrollment; 

Interviewing and Interrogation, Apr. 17 – 21, Guilford Tech CC, Greensboro, - Open enrollment; 

Interviewing and Interrogation, May 8 – 12, Davidson County CC, Lexington, – Open enrollment; 

Investigative Discourse Analysis, Jun. 5 – 9, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

ACFE Annual Global Fraud Conference, Jun. 12 – 15, Nashville, TN. – Open enrollment; 

Investigative Discourse Analysis, Jul. 24 – 28, Guilford Tech CC, Greensboro, - Open enrollment 

(ACFE) Professional Interviewing Techniques, Sep. 18 – 19, Charlotte, - Open enrollment; 

Interviewing and Interrogation, Sep. 25 – 29, Randolph County CC, Asheboro, – Open enrollment; 

Interviewing and Interrogation, Nov. 6 – 10, Davidson County CC, Lexington, – Open enrollment; 

Investigative Discourse Analysis, Nov 13 – 17, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

Surviving the first three minutes of your interview: Dec. 4, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

Advanced Interviewing: The Concept of Persuasion: Dec 5-6, NC Justice Academy (sworn only); 

A partial list of courses that will be offered online in 2017, include: 

Fraud Related Interviews (16 hours); 

Interviewing Head to Poe (8 hours); 

Interviewing Generation ME! (8 hours); 

Interviewer Personality Profile (8 hours); 

How to Plan for an Interview (8 hours); 

The Concept of Persuasion (16 hours). 

*Note: All of the above classes count toward the completion of the Interview Training Recognition Program. 

See the following page for more information. 




Interview Training Recognition Program (ITRP) 

120 hours Total 

Core courses: 48 hours 

Interviewing and Interrogation – 40 hours 

Interviewing Ethics – 8 hours 

A note to those who have 

been in my classes 

previously, those classes 

do count toward the 

completion of the 

program. 

Electives: 72 hours 

*Body Language Interviewing – 16 hours 

Interviewer communication profile – 8 hours 

Interviewer personality profile – 8 hours 

Fraud Related Interviewing – 16 hours 

Interviewing LIKE a psychopath – 16 hours 

Audit related interviewing – 8 hours 

Contemporary Interviewing Dynamics – (up to 16 hours) 

*Background investigation - 16 hours 

Investigative Discourse Analysis – 40 hours 

Interviewing THE psychopath – 16 hours 

Surviving the first 3 minutes of your interview – 8 hours 

Elicitation and the interview process – 24 hours 

Advanced Interviewing: the concept of persuasion – 16 hours Contemporary Interviewing Dynamics 

**Related Legal Issues – (up to 16 hours) 

A wide variety of other approved courses as announced 

*Conducted by Van Ritch 

** Conducted by Smith/Rodgers PLLC 

This program is designed to recognize those professionals whose aspirations to enhance their 

interviewing capabilities are such that they are willing to invest their time and efforts in an endeavor to 

improve. Courses will be offered in traditional, online and digital formats. Note: There is no cost for 

enrollment into the program itself. 

Those completing a training program will be presented with matted and framed documentation. Please 

note: Only those courses approved and conducted by the IRTP instructors are counted for completion of 

the program. 

Questions or to enroll: Contact me at dwrabon@msn.com 

Note to those currently enrolled: I will be contacting you directly with some additional, special course 

offerings I will be conducting, each counting toward completion of the program. 




Coming down in 2017: I have set a goal to begin to conduct more webinars, podcasts along 

with other, non-traditional, training-delivery vehicles as I go into the future. I settled on Go-To- 

Training as the delivery platform. I will keep you posted as this undertaking unfolds. 

My next book: “The Auditor’s Interviewing Survival Manual” – scheduled for release as soon as 

I can finish it. Cut me some slack, I’m writing as fast as I can! Can you hear that? That is my 

Harley weeping from neglect. 

I am always endeavoring to push the envelope regarding the conduct of the interview. Toward 

that end, there are two new courses that I hope to offer in 2017: 

Visually Enhanced Interviewing Techniques (V.E.I.T); 

Interviewing – Tactical Antecedents for Compliance-Gaining (I-TAC). 

I am really excited regarding what these two sessions can bring to the table. More on both, later. 

Recommended reading: Analyzing 911 Homicide Calls: Practical Aspects and 

Applications by Harpster-Adams. 

The text: 

- Highlights the importance of 911 calls in the cases of homicides where, 

often, the call may be the only statement provided by a suspect; 

- Analyzes 911 homicide calls to determine likely indicators of the callers’ 

innocence or guilt. 

Note: Even if you are not a homicide investigator, all interviewers are concerned 

with how people use words to express themselves – truthfully and deceptively. For 

consummate interviewers from a variety of backgrounds, the applicability of this text 

goes far beyond homicide. 

You can find the text at: 

https://www.crcpress.com/Analyzing-911-Homicide-Calls-Practical-Aspects-and- 

Applications/Harpster-Adams/p/book/9781498734554 

Mastering and Maintaining the Interviewing Fundamentals 

___________ 

You know, over eight years ago, when I launched the publication of “Hamlet’s Mind”, I 

dedicated the initial issues to covering the interviewing fundamentals. My belief was then and 

continues to be, that a skillful interviewer is one who has mastered the fundamentals. Just as a 

golf professional, whose very livelihood depends on fundamental capabilities, practices 




continually, so must the professional interviewer. Everything we have addressed up to this, the 

fifty-first issue, is predicated on a mastery of the interviewing fundamentals. 

Whether questioning, detecting deception or persuasion – they are all perishable skills. And as 

the philosophers have noted, “That which is utilized, develops. That which is neglected, withers 

away”. In my classes, we spend time exploring how we can practice our craft in situations that 

are not critical, so that the skills will be “there” for us, when we are in professional settings that 

are critical. 

That being the case, nothing is more fundamental to the success of an interview than the balance 

between the application of open questions to closed questions. Questions are our working tools. 

They are the fundamentals of inquiry. Questions, in and of themselves, are neither good nor bad. 

It is the application of questions that is the critical point. Know this: I like closed questions. I 

apply closed questions. I fold closed questions into my interviewing plan. Adequately and 

appropriately, the utilization of closed questions has excellent functionality. But, I do not play a 

whole round of interviewing exclusively with closed questions. 

However, there is one thing certain and two things sure: many interviewers love closed 

questions like a kid loves ice cream. Now, I am not going to, once again, plow the field of 

questioning – see the previous issues – as to why this is the case. It is enough to say that a good 

rule of thumb is that the ratio of open questions to closed questions should be in the area of eight 

to one. Many times, if you observe an interview or read a transcript you, will find that the 

opposite ratio to be the case. 

Think of closed questions as Michael Moore’s chins – there are just too many of them. Stated 

simply, open questions are the entre and closed questions are the side dishes. Or, as we would 

put it here in the South, open questions are the Bar-B-Que and closed questions are the slaw. Let 

the slaw enhance the meal, not be the meal. And while I am in the neighborhood, I will share 

this food fact with you: North Carolina Piedmont Bar-B-Que is the absolute best. 

More to the Point – Third Installment 

_____________ 

Continuing our examination of the factors that are currently impacting and will increasingly 

impact the interview process, our premise is that the interview is a microcosm of society at large, 

only more distilled. Consequently, those forces, which are part and parcel of society – for better 

or worse - find their ways into the interview room. The interview room setting may range from 

an employment interview, audit-related interview, to an inquiry in conjunction with a criminal 

investigation and everything in between. In this segment we examine: Patty and Peter Pan – 

the delayed onset of adulthood. 

In 1992, Tom Waits (I’m a big fan) released a song titled, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”. Was he 

ever prescient! (You can check it out on YouTube at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IaNaQHjIRE. 




But, before you do, you need to know, Tom, like Scotch Whisky and olives is an acquired taste.) 

To me, nothing has been more conspicuous than the increasing number of adults (in many 

settings, including the interview) displaying the behavioral and attitudinal characteristics of 

children. I believe this phenomena is the primary reason I have so many requests from 

organizations to conduct the class, Interviewing Generation ME! Check this out: 

The National Academy of Sciences articulated adolescence as the stage extending from, around 

twelve, to age thirty. Think about a household where the parent is thirty and the child is twelve. 

Who is raising who? 

The MacArthur Foundation, funded a major research project that concluded that the “transition 

to adulthood” doesn’t end until age thirty-four. 

In 1973, Eric Hoffer, in his writing, “Reflections on the Human Condition”, wrote: If a society is 

to preserve its stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from 

imposing their tastes, attitudes, values and fantasies on everyday life. 

So, what does it mean to be an adult? Here are three, generally accepted criteria: 

- capable of taking accountability for one’s own behavior; 

- the ability to make life-decisions on their own; 

- financially self-sustaining. 

At the start of WWII, my dad and his fellow students enlisted as high school seniors and took off 

to war for four years. Now, college students (and older) need safe spaces, comfort dogs, coloring 

books, hot chocolate and therapy because someone wrote a candidate’s name on the sidewalk 

with a piece of chalk or an election did not go their way. We even have “micro-aggression” 

wherein someone said something with which someone else did not agree, resulting in the need 

for counseling for the second. Linus blankets for everyone. 

Just look around. You’ll see those who are looking at thirty through the rearview mirror, 

dressing like adolescents, spending a significant amount of time playing video games, reading 

books written expressly for juveniles and waiting patiently for that (most passionate) job that will 

accommodate a goodly amount of time on social media, continual, positive affirmation, a 

lifestyle supporting salary and semi-monthly promotions. 




So, how does this reality impact the interviewing process? First, what is your particular 

interviewing position - supervisor, manager, HR, auditor, investigator or other? Secondly, what 

is the primary purpose of your interviews? Thirdly, what level of emotional maturity do you 

presuppose for the person sitting in the chair across from you? Prepare now for that degree of 

emotional maturity to not always be there. 

Consequently, as an interviewer you are going to have to rely more on your ability to question 

(rather than telling, advising, etc.) in order to guide the interviewee’s cognition. And by 

questioning, I don’t simply mean asking questions. I mean utilizing questions with a designed 

purpose for a specific outcome. Oftentimes, the designed purpose will be to impact the 

cognition of the interviewee. More and more, you will need to think of your interview as having 

a dual purpose: one designed to accomplish the organizational purpose for the interview and the 

other to endeavor to offset a timespan of eighteen years (or more) of being twelve years old, over 

and over again. 

Wires from the Bunkers – For Which, I am always appreciative: 

Here are two, interesting reflections from participants in my recent on-line Interviewing Ethics 

class: 

It is very interesting how our society is changing with regards to the constant use of digital 

communication. Communications centers have already begun using text to 911 as a form of 

asking for help instead needing to actually call. As children are growing up, they are becoming 

more and more reliant on the use of non-personal contact. This will change the way that 

interviewers must conduct interviews as they must be cognizant of how the interviewee feels 

more comfortable. However, interviewers must be cautious of using digital forms of 

communication as it will be must easier for suspects to lie when not face to face/ eye to eye with 

the interviewer. While it may be necessary to change methods to increase comfort and rapport 

with a suspect, the integrity of an interview and search for truth must not be compromised. 

No doubt digital communication has and will change things. But even though I’m an old guy, I 

still think the changes for us are more positive than negative. Instead of statements, we have 

recordings, texts, and digital photos. More evidence. It has and will continue to change 

interpersonal communication. But that will also make skilled interviewers that much more 

valuable. Some years ago, I had an interview in which I received an especially convoluted 

answer to a very simple question. The subject was so talking so fast I couldn’t get it all down. 

And I am not allowed to record interviews. So I said, “you mind shooting me an e-mail on that.” 

And he did. It still amazes me what people put in e-mails without thinking. So I got his statement, 

every word. And it’s priceless. And now I regularly get good things from electronic means. So if 

that young man is in the room texting, I might ask him to text me his answer to my key question. 

And he may just do it. 




Here is a rubber-meets-the-road question from the field. Before I include my response, I would 

be interested to know what your response would be: 

Hello Don; I have a quick question, please. When conducting a theft/fraud type interview with 

one individual and multiple interviewers (actually only one interviewer…two observers), do you 

have a preference on the seating arrangement? 

You can share your thoughts with me at: dwrabon@msn.com 

______ 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Concept of Persuasion 

My recent focus has been (and will continue to be) on the persuasion aspect of the interviewing 

process. Consequently, I want to allocate the next couple of issues to the examination of 

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to the persuasion process. I am not going to spend time, effort and 

space providing an overview of his theory. Suffice it to say, most persons are familiar with the 

concept and there is a wealth of information available online to serve as a refresher. 

We will, however, lay our foundation, by saying that he provided a five-stage model of needs: 

physiological, safety, love/belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. We will examine, in 

turn, each stage of the needs’ hierarchy and relate the stage to the persuasion process. 

In this segment, we explore the concept of love/belongingness: This third level, addressing the 

need to belong and be accepted, is interpersonal. This level of need-satisfaction involves the 

interaction with other persons. Here we are dealing with an individual’s subjective norm. The 

subjective norm includes the person(s) or group (gang for example) that are important in the 

persuadee’s life and what their opinion would be of their actions. 

In a debriefing with a career offender, I asked him, “Was there anything they could have done 

that would have caused you to confess”? His response was, “Yes. Put the heat on my wife and 

kids. If they had pushed any questioning to them, it would have ruined their train of thought 

towards me. And to this day, I still have all the love and respect that I had before this 

happened”. 

Have you ever had someone ask, “What would my family think? What would the people where I 

work say? How will I face the people in my church”? If so, you had an individual articulating 

his subjective norm. What the persuader must now do is frame their persuasive theme in such a 

way that addresses and serves to assuage (or eliminate) the interviewee’s subjective norm 

concern. Does it always work? Nope. It can very well be that the subjective norm is so strong 

that the individual will opt for the punishment rather than act in a manner that will (in their mind) 

adversely impact the perception the individual or individuals that comprise their subjective norm. 

I once had an individual, involved in indecent exposure, who opted for two consecutive sixmonth 

sentences rather than counseling. He would rather go to prison for a year and have his 

parents believe he was wrongly convicted than remain free with their having knowledge of what 

he had done. People choose the path that, for them, is the least painful. 




The “DWR” serves a dual 

purpose: 

Do What’s Right 

There is a phrase I use at times, “Licking the red off of 

their candy”. Folks in my classes will often ask 

regarding the origin and meaning of the expression. 

Well, if you speak the truth and the truth is bothersome 

to someone, you have licked the red off of their candy. 

If you do what is right and that action is incommodious 

to someone, you have licked the red off of their candy. 

I picked up the phrase from my sergeant, Dave Fortson, 

when I was a patrol officer with the Salisbury Police 

Department. Dave went on to become the best police 

chief ever. Ultimately, I decided to have patches made. 

These patches are not for sheeple, but rather, 

sheepdogs. 

Donald Wilson Rabon 

My five texts (and no one should ever be without them all): You know; Valentine’s Day is 

just around the corner. What better way can there be, to let someone know just how much 

they mean to you? 

Interviewing and Interrogation, 2 nd edition; 

Fraud Related Interviewing; 

Persuasive Interviewing 2 nd edition; (released April, 2016 - power-point slides are available 

upon request) 

Investigative Discourse Analysis 2 nd Edition; 

These can be ordered directly from Carolina Academic Press - (919) 489-7486, online at 

http://www.cap-press.com or www.amazon.com. 

My newest text, “An Endless Stream of Lies: A Young Man’s Voyage into Fraud” – is 

available in electronic and print formats from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 

Well, that's it. Another year has come and gone. Thank you for spending the year with me. Until 

the March, 2017 issue, know this: I wish for you and yours, that 2017 will prove to be the best 

year ever. I am so appreciative of you, the readership and all that you do, individually and 

collectively to make this world a better place. Stay in touch. You know how I worry, when I 

don’t hear from you. Don Rabon, CFE

Hamlet’s Mind

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