What is the best way to interview someone after a safety event?
The simple answer to this one is ‘as soon as possible’. Actually, there is a very simple approach to interviewing that anyone can learn and apply with ease and confidence. The most important thing to do is NOT to take statement. Having a conversation as soon as practicable after an event and talking through a broad range of questions such as those below will yield you many time more information for your investigation than simply taking a statement. There are a lot of very good reasons for this that space does not allow us to explore just now.
Once again, it all depends on what is going on in your mind and how generously or powerfully you are listening. (See the blog on Listening). The best state of mind to have when interviewing someone after a safety event is one of curiosity and seeking to understand. Remember also, that you are trying to determine what is responsible, not who is responsible.
OK. So how to do a good interview: The three question styles below are enough to get all the information that you need, The most powerful one, especially at the start of an interview is ’free recall’. Here you simply allow the interviewee to talk and you listen generously.
When interviewing, allow the interviewee to speak their mind. Never interrupt – if you have a question, jot it down and ask the interviewee your question later. You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio or even less. After asking them to go through, in as much detail as they want, what happened that day, just close your mouth and listen. Listen generously. Listen with your eyes, with your body and with your mind. Have a partner with you to take down the notes so that you can focus on the body language and show support and active listening to the interview. If you go in with a mindset of listening to understand, you will do fine.
As opportunities arise, you will have the opportunity to explore more information using more open questions. Leave as many of the closed questions as you can to the end.
Choices of question style:
• Free recall – narrative:
o A broad invitation to the witness to mentally recreate the incident and say whatever they want. In order to gain an overall idea of what the witness can recall, this is the best way to start the interview.
• Open ended questions
o Allow for an unlimited and general response from the witness in his/her own words. Such questions tend to result in unrestricted, broad ranging responses.
• Closed questions (including multiple choice):
o These are questions that are designed to limit the responses available to the interviewee. These questions are best for following up on a response to an open question and can usually be answered with a single word or short answer. They are used when limited or specific / more precise information is required.
Below is a list of questions that I have found are extremely useful to review and use. They are broken down into topics that will go a long way to explaining the majority of events we are likely to come across. The best way I have found of using these is to review them from top to bottom as you prepare for an event interview. That way, the question styles are clear in you mind as you start your conversation. It is never a good idea to have this list in front of you and recite the questions. Try to incorporate them into your conversation. Use your own words and level of language suitable for the interviewee. This is a conversation, not a statement. This works. Try it.
A much needed acknowledgment is required before sharing this question set with you. The concepts described as question sets below come from reflections on the latest thinking on what makes ‘safety’. You will see in the question sets, elements of work by some great masters in modern safety and decision thinking: Sidney Dekker, Daniel Kahneman, Eric Hollnagel, and some of Todd Conklin also. I thoroughly recommend you read all of the works of these greats.
The ability to bounce back if something unexpected happens (Resilience)
• In the preparation of a take five or a THA, what level of thought do you put into what could go wrong?
• Which specific parts of a task do you need to vigilant around?
• How best do you prepare to respond to any expected disruptions?
• What do you do if something unexpected happens? For example, an interruption, a new urgent task, an unexpected change of conditions, a resource that is missing, something that goes wrong, et cetera?
• Before you start a task, or at a point during a task, what process do you follow that would, or could, look for, or think about any potential disturbances, surprises and changes that could happen?
• How do you monitor what is going on within your task, or around you, to check that there are no disturbances arising that might interact with you in the completion of your task?
• How do you keep an eye on things that may become a threat in the near future?
• Did you observe anything in particular to make you think something might not go as planned?
• What level of your thought goes into the long-term drift and trends about the way you are doing the task? Have you always done it this way?
• What has changed over the last few months about the way we do the task?
• What do you need to keep an eye on in terms of keeping any long-used shortcuts you have developed in focus?
• What have you learned from the last time you did the task? The way you did it?
• What could happen that is not expected?
• Do you know of any previous incidents or near misses involving this task or similar tasks?
View and action – How do people see the situation and what they doing within it?
• What did you see or notice that was going on around you at the time?
• Tell me in your own words – take your time – what happened?
• What were you doing before the event?
• What did you see happening – immediately before the event?
• What is your understanding of the procedure?
• Where were you up to in the procedure?
• What did you think would happen when you undertook the task (that ended up as an event)?
• What do you do if something unexpected happens? For example, an interruption, a new urgent task, an unexpected change of conditions, a resource that is missing, something that goes wrong, etc.
• How stable are the working conditions? Is your work usually routine? or does it require a lot of improvisation?
• What let you know that this was the right thing to do at this point in the incident?
• Did you seek any guidance as to which way to do the task?
• How confident were you that what you did was going to work?
• What did you try to do, that went wrong?
• What do you do in case of time pressure?
• What do you do if information is missing, or if you cannot get hold of certain people?
• How often do you change the way you work (rarely, often)?
• Suppose you were asked to describe the situation to someone else just before the event. How would you summarize the situation?
• What approach/actions have you seen used, or used yourself, in similar circumstances in the past?
• If you could do it any way that you wanted, how would you go about accomplishing this task?
• What is your understanding of the risks associated with the job?
• Did you assess the risks for this particular job, and how did you do that?
• What controls did you put in place for this job?
• Did you employ the controls in the bow tie for this job?
• Were there any factors affecting your ability to do the task (ask about fatigue, stresses, home affairs, medical issues, directions form supervisors etc)?
• What were you seeing, hearing, smelling, noticing et cetera?
Drift – short term, including ‘Work As Done’ versus ‘Work As Intended’, common practice and operating discipline reality. Also consider procedural drift and longer term drift.
• Have you done the task the same way in the past without any negative safety impact?
• Do you ever adjust or customise the activity to the situation? How? How do you determine which way to proceed?
• How stable are the working conditions? Is your work usually routine? or does it require a lot of improvisation?
• What is the best way to perform your work? Is there an optimal way to do it?
• How often do you change the way you work (rarely, often)?
• What approach/actions have you seen used, or used yourself, in similar circumstances in the past?
• Is the way you did the job, the ‘normal’ way to get the job done?
• If you could do it any way that you wanted, how would you go about accomplishing this task?
• Tell me, in an ideal world, how would things be different than what actually happened?
• What other options were there?
• Anything else?
Intense task focus.
• What did you see, or notice, that was going on around you at the time?
Answering a different question – Doing not what was asked, even if they thought it was – An easier task perhaps?
• How often do you change the way you work (rarely, often)?
• How often do you do the task the way you know it needs to be done rather than the way the boss wants you to do it?
What You See Is All There Is. Including ‘Actual versus expected outcome’ – level of surprise.
• Did you imagine that the outcome, as we know it now, was possible?
• What did you think would happen when you undertook the task (that ended up as an event)?
• Did you get a surprise to see what was going on around you after the event, or just before it?
• How confident were you that what you did was going to work?
• Do you know of any previous incidents or near misses involving this task or similar tasks?
• What about that previous experience seemed relevant to you?
Task and/or procedural complexity.
• What procedures are in place that you were ‘supposed’ to be following?
• What is your understanding of the procedure?
• Where were you up to in the procedure?
• What let you know that this was the right thing to do at this point in the incident?
• Tell me, in an ideal world, how would things be different than what actually happened?
Accountability / authority match/mismatch.
• What procedures are in place that you were ‘supposed’ to be following?
• How experienced are you at the task?
• Do you have the authority to decide how you need to get the job done?
• Can you change the JSEA if you think there is a better way of doing the task?
Judging the quality of a process by its outcome
• How predictable is the work situation and the working conditions?
• What can happen unexpectedly and how do you prepare for it?
• How often have you done the task in the same way and nothing adverse or unexpected happened?
Design of work
• What procedures are in place that you were ‘supposed’ to be following?
• How experienced are you at the task?
• What skills do you need?
• Have you received training on the job you were doing?
• Were you given, or did you have the right tools to do the task?
• What sort of messages do you get about Safety and Production?
• How often have you been included in the review of procedures?
• How did you risk assess the task?
• Was the risk assessment process you used exactly as per the procedure?
• Tell me, in an ideal world, how would things be different than what actually happened?
System Interrelationships
• What set (or mix) of procedures are in place that you were ‘supposed’ to be following?
• Have you read all of the procedures that you are supposed to follow for this task?
There are two very important concepts that interviewers (and all of the ICAM team) are clear about, One is the fact that “It all looks obvious when you know the outcome”, and the other is the concepts of Work-As-Done and Work-As-Intended. They will be covered in other blogs.