It’s one thing to define the scope of a workplace investigation. It’s another to stick to it!

Scope creep can be real. So how do internal HR teams and external investigators complete thorough investigations without going down a rabbit hole of extraneous information? OIG attorney investigators Ilona Turner and Madeline Buitelaar tackled this topic on March 12, 2025, at the CalGovHR “The Future of Work!” Conference and Expo in Rohnert Park, CA. During the interactive workshop, they walked participants through several important steps:

• Identifying the key elements of a complaint
• Determining which need to be investigated
• Crafting the scope questions that will be answered by the investigation
• Interviewing complainants in a trauma-informed way