INVESTIGATIONS

Whether you are a public or private entity, when a concerned party makes an informal or formal complaint, your organization should take immediate steps to protect the involved parties and investigate the complaint.  Employers are legally required to investigate complaints of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and other matters of safety in a timely manner.  Your organization’s responsiveness to a complaint by means of conducting a timely investigation will secure factual evidence and findings while demonstrating your organization’s ethical concern for all parties involved in the complaint. Every complaint has the potential to become a lawsuit and employers should investigate every matter anticipating that the investigative evidence and findings may be examined and used in a court of law.  Investigations must be comprehensive, impartial, timely and legally defensible.  

 

Our ethical investigators are most commonly used when an organization does not have an internal party who possesses the necessary qualifications or the time to conduct the investigation, or if the person accused is among the senior leaders within the organization.  We make it our priority to provide objectivity.  An internal investigator may be perceived as lacking impartiality or lacking the qualifications of a professionally licensed investigator.  Our experience within various public and private entities has suited us with the ability to understand your agency’s culture and history.  Because our investigators are nonlawyer investigators and are sufficiently trained in investigative interviewing techniques, we are perceived as fair, neutral and objective.  We are skilled and experienced in our approach to conflict, thus mitigating negative responses from concerned parties.  

 

Importantly, we understand the law and the standards the legal system uses to determine if a violation occurred or if an action was deemed unlawful.  Our research of board policy, administrative regulations, California codes, standards set forth by the Office of Civil Rights and the definitions provided by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have given us the ability to investigate in a meaningful way.  We aim to provide our clients with findings of facts specific to the information their legal counsel and/or decision makers will need to determine if actions were unlawful and what remediation, if any, should be taken.  We carefully organize our investigative reports keenly aware of the facts a court would need to determine if a violation of law has occurred.  

 

We are not attorneys and we do not provide legal advice or recommendations, but we do pride ourselves on leaving no stone unturned and in finding truth using lawful and ethical means.  Even though our clients may have a desired outcome in mind at the time they retain our services, our clients never hire us with the goal or expectation of NMA achieving their desired outcome.  They know our investigations are one hundred percent impartial, reliable and based on factual evidence.  We salute each of our clients for choosing NMA to conduct investigations on their behalf.  We stand on our oath to provide unbiased, fact-based, and legally defensible investigations, regardless of who has contracted our services.  Our word is our word and we have never violated an ethical standard or waivered in our commitment to honesty and integrity.  We are proud of our perfect standing with the Bureau of Security and Investigations and with the Department of Consumer Affairs.