Mike Comer is a funny, irreverent and masterful writer and an anti-fraud investigator. The two have come together splendidly in his latest book, writes Mark Rowe.
While it must be difficult enough to write a book titled Deception at Work: Investigating and Countering Lies and Fraud Strategies, it’s far more difficult to write a readable book on a potentially dry subject. Professional Security has been praising Comer’s books for years. Investigating Corporate Fraud, for instance, came out in 2003; in May 2004, we reviewed Dealing With Deception At Work: The HR Manager’s guide to tackling deceit, fraud and dishonesty. One complaint about this new book is that it runs over much the same ground. Another is the price – £95 (splutter!) However the ground is very worth covering twice. Equally, he is a regular speaker, at for example the internal audit conference, IACON 2005, organised by IIR, in London from March 15 to 18.
Exposed to deception
As with the earlier book, Comer opens with the point that we are exposed to deception all the time: on the TV, on expenses forms, staff excuses for not coming to work or not doing work. His book not only covers fraud, but the false CV and anonymous letter making allegations against an employee, and business conmen. If you want to get at the truth about dishonesty: “The bottom line is that people will always answer questions and admit the truth providing you have a cunning plan and use your powers of persuasion … The first rule of interviewing is never give up and the second is if one person won’t tell you the truth, somebody else will.” A liar will always fail against an effective interviewer, is one of Comer’s maxims.
‘The result of mistakes’
He brings in heavyweights like Freud and Darwin to back his case but, as he admits, “the book is the result of mistakes made over 40 years as a practitioner”. For instance, he claims: “If you have a genuine itch, the chances are you will scratch it five times. If you consciously move to make a scratch it will be more or less than five times.” Is that enough to set you off itching all over?! Because, as Comer repeats, ‘the liar has two monkeys on his back’ – the subconscious that always wants to blurt out the truth and give away the real thinking; and the memory, ‘a database of unbridled accuracy’. The liar may avoid confessing to the investigator, by pretending to forget, staying silent, and other evasions in a battle of wits. But the liar leaves abundant clues – the detail is in the book (which is a door-stopper). It may be contrived anger; or body language; or stilted language. Most crooks (white-collar and others) tend to assume everyone else is as crooked as they are: “The real bottom line is that liars do not do or say the things an innocent person would and do not show congruent emotions.” Deciding that a person is not telling the truth is the easy part, Comer adds. Dealing with it is more difficult. Hence the chapter ‘planning investigations and legal background for tough interviews’ which starts 150-odd pages on doing interviews with suspects. It’s the heart of the book, and so long because Comer describes how the investigator-interviewer must try to retain control. That ranges from the interview room being ‘clinically clean and tidy’ to creating rapport: ‘be prepared to communicate with him at an emotional level’, while remaining emotionally detached (don’t bluster). Successful interviewing is 95 per cent planning, says Comer – just one of no end of pithy remarks. He suggests for example a practice interview, with a colleague as the suspect: “In a second trial, you should take the role of the suspect.”
Doesn’t like …
Comer doesn’t like the North, lawyers, accountants, estate agents, believers in the Data Protection Act … quite a lot of people, in fact. He does have sympathy for “the poor so-and-sos who day in, day out have to face and deal with deception, sometimes in difficult or violent circumstances”. To sum up, this is another Comer masterpiece worth studying deeply by anyone whose job means facing tricky, deceitful or plain lying people.
Deception at Work: Investigating and Countering Lies and Fraud Strategies, by Mike Comer and Timothy Stephens. Hardback, 459 pages, £95, ISBN 0 566 08636 0. Published by Gower, Aldershot, GU11 3HR. Visit www.gowerpub.com
About the author: Mike Comer’s consultancy is Cobasco. His biography is on his website:
