WEBVTT 00:00.590 --> 00:06.710 In this video, I want to talk about objectivity and avoiding bias and things to be careful of. 00:07.830 --> 00:14.280 So during our investigations or even before, we might have personal feelings about it. 00:14.550 --> 00:19.320 It's kind of hard to come and go into something without a preconceived notion. 00:19.320 --> 00:20.640 Outside influence. 00:20.640 --> 00:27.570 Things like friends, family, the people that are entrusting us with an investigation, for example, 00:28.020 --> 00:31.920 might be something in a news story that we're investigating. 00:31.920 --> 00:38.850 Maybe we're trying to, um, verify the legitimacy of a story, and there could be a lot of outside 00:38.850 --> 00:44.400 influence, a lot of people chiming in about what they think about that story, what their ideas are, 00:44.400 --> 00:48.390 what their supposed evidence is, or what happened. 00:49.300 --> 00:55.720 Our past history might influence our our perception and how we enter things. 00:56.770 --> 01:00.490 We may have had similar cases, which goes back to past history. 01:00.880 --> 01:07.180 We might be dealing with a subject matter that's that's very emotional to us. 01:07.180 --> 01:11.320 Things like missing children, violent crimes, for example. 01:11.830 --> 01:17.290 You might be a victim of violent crime and you're investigating one or someone that you know or care 01:17.290 --> 01:19.690 about was a victim of a violent crime. 01:19.690 --> 01:22.060 And maybe you're investigating a violent crime. 01:22.060 --> 01:27.550 So that could definitely affect your personal feelings about things like that. 01:28.180 --> 01:35.620 Um, it could be investigating a person that we distrust or like, or a subject matter or a group or 01:35.620 --> 01:36.280 whatnot. 01:36.280 --> 01:43.990 There's a lot of different things that we may go into where we have a particular idea about it or a 01:43.990 --> 01:48.670 feeling about it, either negative or positive even. 01:48.850 --> 01:54.610 We might have positive feelings about a certain group or a certain ideal, or things like that, or 01:54.610 --> 02:02.620 a person, and and generally what we want to always assume the best about someone or something that 02:02.620 --> 02:03.790 we like. 02:03.790 --> 02:07.000 And that could be a different type of bias. 02:08.340 --> 02:09.600 But the problem is. 02:10.100 --> 02:14.390 When we enter investigation with bias, it's a quick way to poison it. 02:14.810 --> 02:22.040 If I'm going in with either a positive bias or a negative bias, and I allow that to. 02:23.130 --> 02:24.810 Corrupt my investigation. 02:24.810 --> 02:33.060 I start looking for things to validate my feelings and what the results are going to be one way or another. 02:33.060 --> 02:39.720 That's a really quick way to poison your investigation, and also to get bad evidence and ultimately 02:39.720 --> 02:44.880 give bad information back to whoever we're doing the investigation for. 02:45.420 --> 02:47.700 And you got to be really careful about that. 02:47.700 --> 02:54.990 And we see this a lot with things like misinformation, disinformation, where people will go and they'll 02:54.990 --> 03:03.240 research something and they they'll get a certain idea and they have certain beliefs and they go out 03:03.240 --> 03:05.310 and they look for validation for that. 03:05.310 --> 03:11.970 They go look for stories or posts or supposed evidence that backs up their personal ideals. 03:12.270 --> 03:15.870 And that information turns out to be bad most of the time. 03:15.870 --> 03:22.530 Things like the supposed news site that looks like a news site in very small print, it says, uh, 03:22.530 --> 03:26.400 parody or um, something like that. 03:26.400 --> 03:35.130 You know, it's, it's or the photo is photoshopped and, but and the source that they get it from is 03:35.130 --> 03:40.650 not a credible source, but it backs up their personal bias, what they, what they want to believe. 03:40.830 --> 03:48.420 And again, we have to be very careful about that because that ultimately the information is wrong. 03:48.420 --> 03:54.870 And if we present that wrong information from an investigation back to our client, or if it's a legal 03:54.870 --> 04:05.730 issue or if it's, um, something that may get someone terminated or anything like that, that ultimately 04:05.730 --> 04:07.410 does not help anyone. 04:08.160 --> 04:13.110 So we have to be very careful about our bias poisoning, our investigation. 04:13.110 --> 04:19.500 We have to go with a, uh, objective mind if as much as possible, we need to try to remain objective 04:19.500 --> 04:20.760 in our methods. 04:20.760 --> 04:23.160 So again, if I have a. 04:24.150 --> 04:31.440 If I have a personal bias towards something, I want to try to go in as much as possible to not allow 04:31.440 --> 04:33.420 that to influence my decision. 04:33.420 --> 04:40.860 I need to go in and just go, okay, well, I'm going to go let the evidence speak for itself. 04:41.630 --> 04:47.360 I'm not going to seek out answers that lead me down a certain path. 04:47.360 --> 04:52.670 I'm going to try to stay down the middle and collect information and then verify it. 04:52.670 --> 04:56.690 So again, we need to, uh, remain objective. 04:56.690 --> 05:01.070 And the evidence we collect, we can't jump to conclusions without evidence that is vetted. 05:01.070 --> 05:09.260 So if I find information that that backs up what I would like it to be, I need to make sure that information 05:09.260 --> 05:10.430 is good. 05:10.430 --> 05:12.860 We need to verify our results. 05:13.810 --> 05:18.430 Whether it backs up our, um, our beliefs or not. 05:18.430 --> 05:21.820 We need to verify anything, any information we find. 05:21.820 --> 05:27.100 And even if we're going in without any personal bias, it's it's always important to verify your results 05:27.100 --> 05:31.990 and make sure that it to the best of your ability, that it is legitimate. 05:32.990 --> 05:36.380 Our findings may not always be what we originally expected. 05:36.770 --> 05:42.680 There's times where I went in to debunk something and it turned out to be. 05:43.170 --> 05:44.880 From all the evidence, I found that. 05:44.880 --> 05:52.890 Okay, well, actually, you know that that was true or it was partially true or things like that. 05:53.340 --> 05:54.420 So. 05:55.980 --> 06:02.100 If we have an idea or in our head that something's going to turn out a certain way, it might not. 06:02.100 --> 06:08.100 So we have to be very cognizant of being open minded in our investigation. 06:08.310 --> 06:14.100 The other problem is if we're if we're kind of closed off, if we're kind of figure things are going 06:14.100 --> 06:20.640 to go a certain way, we're not going to be open to finding other information or using looking at other 06:20.640 --> 06:27.030 avenues to find information and verify our, our results and, and find new evidence. 06:27.630 --> 06:30.900 Our findings may not be what our clients expected. 06:31.840 --> 06:34.090 And ultimately that's okay. 06:34.090 --> 06:35.620 As long as. 06:36.210 --> 06:43.950 You're pretty confident in what you found and how legitimate that information is, and that's something 06:43.950 --> 06:46.500 that should be explained to the client ahead of time. 06:47.200 --> 06:48.070 That. 06:48.880 --> 06:54.280 If you if you think the evidence is going to point a certain way, it may not. 06:55.110 --> 07:01.410 There may be a 90% chance that it is going to turn out the way you think it is, and I could find the 07:01.410 --> 07:06.000 evidence for you, and I can back it up and I can verify everything for you. 07:06.510 --> 07:09.480 But there is a chance that it may not. 07:09.480 --> 07:11.400 So you need to be prepared for that. 07:11.400 --> 07:14.430 And ultimately, we are looking for the truth. 07:15.220 --> 07:22.810 We're not looking to say validate anyone's personal beliefs or feelings per se. 07:22.840 --> 07:29.650 We're ultimately looking for what the actual truth is, so keep that in mind. 07:30.500 --> 07:32.480 Try to be open minded. 07:33.250 --> 07:37.390 And try to keep your biases out of your investigations. 07:37.750 --> 07:38.950 Thank you for watching. 07:38.950 --> 07:40.300 I'll see you in the next video.