The Latest in Detecting Deception

I spend about two and a half weeks in my Fraud Examination class studying how we can detect when someone is being deceptive. I think it's a fascinating area that holds a lot of promise as one of the best things auditors could learn to utilize to detect fraud. If I was king of independent auditing for a day, I would change auditors' requirements to interview for fraud but that is the subject of a future post...

When I teach about detecting deception, I emphasize to my students that non-verbal cues are much less reliable than verbal cues. Some recent research shows that text analysis in verbal cues reveals four patterns in people who are lying. Check out the short, but informative, video below to learn more.

My Analysis of the Lance Armstrong-Oprah Winfrey Interview

Photo taken from WSJ.com

I was traveling last night and was unable to watch the interview last night but I read some articles on what happened in Lance Armstrong's interview by Oprah Winfrey including one that gives all his responses on the Wall Street Journal. It's interesting reading for sure. Here are some thoughts:

Signs of deception in Lance Armstrong's denials

There is a vast amount of research on detecting deception by observing how individuals respond to questions. Both verbal and non-verbal signs have been tested and the research suggests that verbal cues are often quite revealing of whether a person is lying.