Stop Seeking "The Truth" in Interviews—Build the Foundation Instead

We keep talking about getting to "the truth" in investigative interviews. Interviewers proudly declare, "I just want the truth." But here's the uncomfortable question we need to confront: Can we ever really get to the truth?

More importantly: Should that even be our goal?

The Problem with "The Truth"

In my experience, when interviewers say they want "the truth," what they often mean is: "I want you to confirm what I already believe." They've formed an investigative hypothesis, and the interview becomes an exercise in validation rather than information gathering. It's confirmation bias dressed up in noble language.

But there's a deeper problem—an epistemological one, a question about the very nature of knowledge and whether we can truly know anything with certainty. What do we even mean by "the truth"?

Philosophers have long grappled with objective versus subjective truth. Perhaps there exists some objective truth—what actually happened in that moment, in that room. But we can never access it directly. It exists outside the bounds of the countless subjective perspectives that shape how we perceive it.

And we can't retreat to "my truth" either. As Leibniz understood, we only realize ourselves in relation to others—our truth exists in relation to others' truths. There is no purely objective truth we can grasp, nor is there a purely subjective truth we can claim as solely our own.

What This Means for Investigative Interviewing

Consider a shooting with multiple witnesses. You have:

• Physical evidence: shell casings, ballistics, forensics—which seems objective but still requires subjective interpretation by experts applying learned frameworks

• Multiple witnesses, each experiencing the event from different vantage points, with different attentional biases, reconstructing memories through their own cognitive filters

• The subject, who likely can't fully explain what happened or why (how do any of us truly know why we did what we did?)

No single source delivers "the truth." Even combined, they don't reveal some objective reality. What we're actually doing—what we've always been doing—is constructing understanding from incomplete, subjective pieces.

The Interview as Relational Space

Here's what we must understand: The interview itself is relational. Understanding emerges in the space between people, not as something extracted from them. The interviewer isn't a neutral observer discovering what exists independently—they're an active participant in how understanding gets constructed through the relationship, the questions asked, the context created.

We, as interviewers, are players in creating understanding—perhaps not "the truth" but a generally agreed upon understanding—and we have to recognize that role. We shape what emerges through:

• The questions we choose to ask (and don't ask)

• The relationship we build (or fail to build)

• The context we create in the interview space

• Our own interpretive frameworks that shape how we hear and understand responses

This isn't a weakness of the process. It's the fundamental nature of human communication and knowledge construction. Pretending we're neutral extractors of pre-existing truth is either naive or dishonest.

Building the Foundation, Not Chasing the Truth

Once we accept this relational reality, everything changes:

Stop chasing "the truth." It's epistemologically impossible and operationally counterproductive. The pursuit of truth leads to confession-seeking, confirmation bias, and the dangerous certainty that produces wrongful convictions.

Start building the investigative foundation. Our job is to gather the richest, most comprehensive information possible—multiple perspectives, deep context, contradictions and all—while remaining conscious of our role in how that understanding is constructed.

When multiple interviewers, witnesses, experts, and sources participate in building that understanding—when there's sufficient overlap and coherence—we get something workable. Not "the truth," but a shared understanding robust enough to support sound decisions.

What Actually Works: Intelligence Interviewing as Foundation-Building

If we accept that we cannot access "the truth," what should we be doing instead?

We build the strongest investigative foundation possible.

This isn't just semantic wordplay—it's a fundamental reorientation of purpose and practice. Intelligence interviewing focuses on gathering comprehensive information across multiple sources and perspectives, recognizing that what we construct from this base is the best we can achieve.

The Practical Shifts

From Confession-Seeking to Information-Gathering

Seeking confessions is confirmation bias weaponized. You've already decided what happened; you just need someone to say it. Interrogation tactics are designed to break down resistance to confirming your hypothesis—not to actually gather information.

Information-gathering requires genuine openness. You have to be willing to encounter information that contradicts your hypothesis, complicates your narrative, or reveals something entirely unexpected. This is psychologically difficult because:

• We crave closure and certainty

• We're ego-invested in being right about our hypothesis

• Organizations often reward confessions and case closures over thorough information-gathering

But gathering information—rather than seeking validation—is what builds a foundation that can actually support sound conclusions.

Embracing Professional Humility

When we claim to "reveal the truth," we're playing god. We're claiming access to something that doesn't exist for humans.

The interviewer who knows they're gathering information to build a foundation maintains appropriate humility about what they can actually accomplish. They recognize:

• Every source provides a subjective rendering shaped by position, perception, memory, and relation

• The interview itself is a relational space where understanding is co-constructed, not extracted

• Multiple perspectives don't add up to objective truth—they create a richer, more complete base

This humility isn't weakness. It's intellectual honesty. And it protects against the dangerous certainty that leads to tunnel vision, false confessions, and wrongful convictions.

Accounting for Multiple Viewpoints

Every investigation requires integrating multiple subjective perspectives. Even your "hardest" physical evidence—forensics, ballistics, DNA—requires subjective interpretation by experts applying learned frameworks and making judgment calls.

The investigative base you build must account for:

How different witnesses experienced the same event from different vantage points

• How attentional biases and memory reconstruction shape what people can tell you

• How subjects themselves often cannot clearly articulate their motivations (we rarely have perfect access to why we do what we do)

• How expert analysis of physical evidence still flows through subjective interpretation

Success isn't measured by whether you "got the truth." It's measured by how robust your information base is—how well it incorporates multiple perspectives, acknowledges contradictions, and provides a stable foundation for sound investigative conclusions.

The Intelligence Interviewing Mindset

Intelligence interviewing, as I've come to understand it, requires:

• Going deeper: More context, more nuance, more layers from each source

• Going broader: More sources, more perspectives, more relational matrices

• Staying open: Genuine receptivity to information that challenges your beliefs

• Remaining humble: Recognizing your role as foundation-builder, not truth-revealer

This approach is actually more rigorous than traditional interrogation. Building a comprehensive base from diverse, subjective sources is harder than shoehorning information into a predetermined "truth."

But it's honest. It's epistemologically sound. And it produces better investigative outcomes.

Moving Forward

The terminology matters because it signals this fundamental shift. "Interrogation" carries the baggage of confession-seeking and truth claims. "Investigative interviewing" began moving us toward information-gathering across all interview types—victim, witness, subject.

"Intelligence interviewing" takes it further: it's about building the deepest, broadest informational foundation we possibly can, while remaining intellectually humble about what that foundation represents.

Not the truth. Never the truth. Simply the best understanding we can construct from the incomplete, subjective pieces available to us.

And that's enough. In fact, it's all we've ever really had.