[SHRM2026 Report 7] Detecting Deception: Practical Skills for HR Professionals - Learning from a former US Department of Justice prosecutor about 'scientific approaches to detecting lies' without bias, and HR interview and investigation skills

*This content is based on the individual's interpretation of the lecture. Click here for past blogs.

1. Why I am writing this

In today's world, where various information is flying around, the approximately 100 million people living in Japan do not have many opportunities to learn about the latest global initiatives and trends. At Every Inc., we uphold the vision of 'Performance and Excitement from HR,' and we provide information that is not 'Japan-specific' but 'global standard,' including history, initiatives, and case studies related to D&I, based on global initiatives and academic literature.

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2. What is the SHRM Annual Conference?

SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) is one of the largest HR professional organizations with over 300,000 members worldwide.

Its annual conference, the 'SHRM Annual Conference & Expo,' is a global event where HR professionals from all over the world gather every year to share insights on all areas of HR, including the latest HR strategies, organizational development, legal amendments, talent management, and technology.

This report covers a session at 'SHRM2026,' which is being held in Orlando, Florida, USA, featuring Michael Johnson, a former US Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor, now a board advisor at Traliant, which provides compliance training, and a world-class professional in deception detection as a speaker.

The theme of the session was 'Detecting Deception: Practical Skills for HR Professionals'. For HR professionals who are forced to make many 'judgments' every day, from identifying resume fraud in job interviews and investigating internal misconduct or harassment to exaggerating performance claims by sales representatives, he shared scientifically verified approaches to identifying honesty and deception that do not rely on intuition or assumptions.

3. Why can't people detect lies? The fact that 'even experts have a 55% accuracy rate'

According to research data, the average person is lied to twice a day. Despite this, most people are extremely poor at detecting deception in others.

Johnson points out that the reason for this is that 'many people rely on baseless and inaccurate stereotypes (assumptions) such as 'people who are lying avoid eye contact' or 'become suspicious' to judge the other person's behavior.'

According to the slides projected during the session, a large-scale meta-analysis (Bond & DePaulo 2006) targeting experts in deception detection shows that the rate at which lies and truths were correctly identified was only 55%. This is almost the same as the probability of flipping a coin and guessing heads or tails (50%).

However, the problem is that many people have very high confidence (overconfidence) in their own judgment, believing that 'I have the right inner judgment to see through others.' This gap between 'overconfidence' and 'low actual accuracy' is the biggest cause of major oversights and misjudgments by HR in interviews and investigations.

4. Scientifically refuting the 'liar stereotype'

Johnson clearly demonstrated that many of the behaviors we intuitively believe to be 'signs of deception' have no scientific basis.

The projected slide listed the following four behaviors as 'liars are more likely than truth tellers to':

• Avoid eye contact

• Become fidgety

• Increase their blink rate

• Look up and to the right

However, Mr. Johnson completely refuted these behaviors, stating that 'Liars are NOT more likely than truth tellers to' do these things.

This is because academic research, such as that by DePaulo (2003) and Mann (2002), has proven that there is no significant causal relationship between these behaviors and deception. For example, the behavior of 'avoiding eye contact' is often caused by simple nervousness, cultural background, or an introverted personality, rather than because someone is lying.

Judging others based on baseless stereotypes increases the risk of overlooking talented individuals and causing serious wrongful accusations in harassment investigations.

5. The 'three factors' to focus on instead, and 'Deflection'

Instead of relying on stereotypes, Mr. Johnson presented 'three factors that impact how people may behave when lying' that should be focused on to detect deception.

1. Emotion

2. Cognitive effort

3. Attempted impression management

People who are lying experience high cognitive effort to maintain the consistency of their story, and they also attempt to control their impression to 'look honest' (Attempted impression management). The contradictions that appear as a result, and the 'deflection' movements in response to questions, are the signs that HR should pay attention to.

Specific examples of Deflection

Mr. Johnson used slides from a role-play scenario involving a harassment investigation to show how Deflection specifically manifests.

Henry's response does not answer the question directly, but shows a 'deflection' movement where he tries to shift the topic to the achievements of other excellent team members or to a different subject entirely.

6. The 'Interview Trap' in Japanese companies—The problem where the person themselves 'does not understand' rather than malicious 'lying'

The point made by former DOJ prosecutor Michael Johnson that 'even experts only have a 55% accuracy rate in detection' presents a very heavy fact for us in HR in Japan as well. I feel that this problem surfaces in a slightly different and more complex form in Japanese recruitment interviews compared to the West.

Similar 'exaggeration of achievements' occurs frequently in Japan, but it is not necessarily an intentional 'lie.' Rather, it is very often a form of deception without malice, where 'the person themselves does not structurally understand why that result was achieved, yet speaks of it as if it were their own accomplishment.'

In many Japanese corporate organizations, individual areas of responsibility (jobs) are not clear, and tasks tend to be assigned on an ad-hoc basis depending on the situation. Therefore, final results are almost always produced as a collaborative effort at the 'team level' rather than by an 'individual.' Job seekers speak of results that naturally emerged through the powerful company mechanisms (systems) or collaboration with excellent colleagues as 'I did it' during interviews. They are not bracing themselves to 'tell a lie,' but rather, the person themselves does not understand the causal relationship between the 'environment' they were placed in and their 'individual capability'..

That is precisely why it is more important than anything else for both the candidate and the interviewer to properly understand and deconstruct the 'environment (Situation) in which the applicant achieved those results'.

So, what does it specifically mean to 'properly understand the environment'?

I believe that in an interview, checking the candidate's 'calendar (schedule) from the past week' is the most realistic approach to deconstructing their environment.

This is because, unlike episodes beautifully crafted for an interview, the blocks (appointments) etched into a calendar are a mirror that 100% accurately reflects the real system of an organization, showing 'what they spend their time on, who they interact with, and what they are specifically doing'.

By unraveling the facts etched into this calendar based on academic evidence from organizational behavior and management theory, the true 'Situation' the candidate was in becomes clearly visualized.

4 Steps to Deconstructing the 'Situation (Environment)' from a Calendar

① Understanding team goals and the nature of tasks (Task Interdependence Theory)

Check whether the calendar is filled with 'individual work time' or packed with 'meetings' with other departments. Deconstruct the fluidity and assignment methods to see if the team's goal was 'the sum of individual numbers' or a 'reciprocal' task where everyone collaborated closely.

• Specific question: “In a typical week of work you recently experienced, what calendar block took up the most time? How did that task link with members in the preceding and subsequent processes?”

② Clarifying role division, level of involvement, and responsibility (RACI Model)

Verify whether the candidate was just an 'attendee' listening to reports in those meeting slots, a 'Responsible' party driving the actual work, or the 'Accountable' party bearing the risk, to prevent misrepresentation of their level of involvement.

• Specific question: “What was your specific role (facilitator, mere reporter, decision-maker) in that regular meeting? If that project had failed, were you in the position that would have been held most accountable within the company?”

③ Daily communication and stakeholders (Stakeholder Salience Model)

Unravel the attributes of the participants registered on the calendar. Are they only from your own team, managers from other departments, or executives and external vendors? Deconstruct which layers of the organization and which conflicts (conflicting interests) the candidate faced daily.

• Specific question: “Who was the stakeholder from another department with whom you had the highest density of communication on your calendar that week? What was the biggest barrier to getting that person involved?”

④ Decision-making process and group dynamics (Consensus Building Theory)

Deconstruct the structure unique to Japanese companies of 'deciding by committee' (nemawashi/internal approval). By checking for the presence of '1-on-1s' or 'pre-alignment' on the calendar, you can see how the individual controlled the consensus-building process leading up to the meeting itself.

• Specific question: “Before that final decision meeting was scheduled, what calendar blocks (pre-alignment) did you design with whom for the sake of prior nemawashi or consensus building?”

There is no need to conduct a cold 'interrogation' as if exposing a liar. As Mr. Johnson says, HR should show an attitude of active listening, build strong rapport, and together unravel the 'facts of time creation in the most recent realistic week' rather than a polished story from the past.

'Properly understanding the environment from a calendar and extracting the true value (Character) residing in the individual.' This may be the interview literacy needed to go beyond intuition (the 55% barrier) and prevent mismatches that are unfortunate for both parties.

Thank you for reading until the end.

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Author Introduction: Katsumitsu Matsuzawa

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1986. After graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University, he joined Triumph Co., Ltd. in 2009. He gained experience as a recruiter seconded to a general trading company and was involved in recruitment and talent development across diverse industries. In 2016, he became the youngest executive officer in the company's history. He oversaw the sales, marketing, and recruitment departments, driving rapid growth that saw sales increase by 300% and the organization size grow sixfold over five years. He consistently led everything from business strategy formulation to business operations with P/L responsibility and organizational management, achieving results in both business growth and organizational development.

In 2018, he moved to the U.S. to systematically study HR, organizational psychology, and positive psychology at UC Berkeley. After returning to Japan in April 2020, he established Every Co., Ltd. With the mission of "delivering world-class HR to Japan," he launched Every HR Academy, which specializes in training HRBPs and strategic HR professionals. Currently, as one of the few HR professionals in Japan who holds multiple world-class HR certifications such as SHRM-SCP (SHRM), CPTD (ATD), and SPHRi / GPHR (HRCI), he supports corporate HR transformation and organizational development.

Furthermore, based on the latest HR theory and people analytics learned at UC Berkeley, the Wharton School, and the University of Pennsylvania, he has developed a unique HR education program that integrates "academia, practice, and management." He supports corporate talent strategies in a wide range of areas, including HRBP development, talent management, organizational development, and leadership development.

Certifications held:
SHRM-SCP (SHRM)
CPTD (ATD)
Senior Professional in Human Resources – International (HRCI)
Global Professional in Human Resources (HRCI)
The Science of Happiness (UC Berkeley), and others

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