Which practice improves interview credibility?

• A. Use open-ended questions, avoid leading prompts, listen actively, avoid bias, and corroborate with other evidence
• B. Use leading prompts to control memory
• C. Entomb the witness conversation in stenography
• D. Ignore inconsistencies

Answer: (A)

Interview credibility hinges on eliciting accurate, detailed information while minimizing bias and memory distortion. Using open-ended questions invites witnesses to describe events in their own words, yielding richer details and a better sense of what happened. Avoiding leading prompts prevents steering memory and reduces the chance of false or biased responses. Listening actively shows you’re engaged, helps you pick up on inconsistencies or noteworthy details, and supports trust. Being mindful of bias—both your own and any implicit ones—helps keep the interview fair and more reliable. Finally, corroborating statements with other evidence checks what was said against what can be verified, boosting overall reliability.

Leading prompts tend to steer memory and produce biased or planted details, so they undermine credibility. Recording or stenography alone doesn’t improve trust or accuracy and can remove the interactive, clarifying aspects of the interview. Ignoring inconsistencies lets contradictions go unaddressed, which hurts credibility and can mask false or incomplete information.