Am I hearing the same story?

Often when we hear information that broadly fits with our previous ideas, thinking or experiences, we quickly take it on board and add it to our prior convictions. This can be a consequence of confirmation bias, through which we seek out information that supports our existing ideas – and reject information that doesn’t fit quite so easily.

During interviews, this can result in us valuing information that fits with our preconceptions of what happened, and neglecting information that doesn’t support our thinking. For example, if we think production pressures are considered to be important in this incident, we can prioritize information from workers that supports this premise, whilst ignoring other things they are telling us about supervision, resources or training – any of which may be of equal importance. We therefore end up thinking we are hearing the same story, when in fact we’re not. We are simply filtering out the information that doesn’t fit due to confirmation bias.

Suggested actions:

For Interviewers

• Pay attention to the details in what people are saying and actively listen to their stories.
• Pay attention to where information doesn’t match up and where there are differences in what interviewees are saying – this could be where the most useful information lies.
• Repeat back what you think you heard, to check back in with the interviewee that you haven’t missed something because it didn’t fit with the wider narrative.
• Run your thoughts or notes past another person to check you haven’t missed anything.

For Managers

• Provide resources to enable note taking or other support during interviews, to allow for easy reflection by the interviewer(s) or others to highlight this bias should it occur.

Find out more about confirmation bias here.