if you lie and get caught either in the polygraph or background you can kiss your career goodby.. on the other hand if these behaviors are outside the minimum standards tell the truth and get on with your career.. if you lie and get caught your credibility in Court will be non existent

WannaBeCopper wrote on Dec 13^th, 2010 at 3:35am:

Regardless of whether you think you will get caught, you should tell the truth because that is the ethical thing to do.

If you become a cop are you going to obey the law and follow proper procedure when you think you will get caught doing otherwise, or will you obey the law and follow proper procedure all the time because it is the right thing to do?

WannaBeCopper

Is the person you are now strong enough to be honest about the person you used to be?

WannaBeCopper wrote on Dec 13^th, 2010 at 3:35am:

Some of the documented official known instances of a polygraph interrogation/exam being successfully “beat” were in the cases of highly skilled operatives of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS)/Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), and the Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI). There might be other occasional occurrences, but in terms of the historical record, those two main key entities were alleged to be successful at “beating” it in an intentional, pre-planned and consistent manner. Remember, the actual instrumentation phase (when you are actually hooked up to the polygraph) is but a small component of the total examination/interrogation session.

The point I am trying to make to the original poster is that you are nowhere near that playing field, knowledge base, or skill level. So your best course of action is to be totally honest and to tell the whole complete truth, and nothing but the whole complete truth, and you shall be set free (you will feel better about yourself).

The interrogator/interviewer is experienced and is not a fool. Try to intentionally lie and you will be caught and blacklisted for life from all future possible law enforcement and security agency employment positions. If you tell the truth, the worse that could happen is that you might be delayed for a bit longer, but you will not face the risk of being blacklisted for life for dishonesty and attempted deception.

Do as you wish, but remember, you won’t be the first, not the last, to be caught and fail...and ultimately it’s all a test of loyalty and reliability, with your decisions reflecting highly on your ethics and reliability/security.

George,

I do understand where you are coming from and cannot refute your points from a purely technical perspective. However, I do believe we are coming from somewhat different, but nonetheless important viewpoints. You are referencing technical points based on controlled ideal experiment type scenarios.

I however am talking about the real-life implementation of the art of polygraphy in a pre-employment type complex environment. Here are a few additional practical points that would reduce the significance of the accuracy/validity side of the technical machine/procedure debate:

1. The pre-employment polygraph is a holistic process taken as a whole, so for example out of a five hour interview session the subject would only be hooked up to the machine for about 20 minutes, and only at the end.

2. The charts alone do not decide the outcome; the interviewer/examiner submits a recommendation of whether a subject should continue on with processing, based on a holistic global overview and professional opinion of multiple factors, and of an overall impression; not because of any specific technical chart data. In other words, it is more subjective art, than science, just like a standard job interview.

3. The polygraph can be best used as a tool, akin to a magnifying glass, so help identify and zoom in on areas that might need to be looked at closer, and be further investigated. Thus, it is an invaluable tool for pre-employment screening purposes. 

Can you name any other screening tool that has been as effective at uncovering and flushing out information about applicants? 

Of course, different agencies and departments would use different procedures and methodologies, but the above were just a few points to keep in mind, which would apply to some of the agencies, at least some of the time.

In conclusion, the polygraph is just a toolset, just as a notepad and a pen are just tools, and in the hands of a seasoned interviewer, the use of this toolset does produce results, and does save money in the end; which is why it continues to be employed in sensitive domains.

Well you sure do bring up a good point in terms of the apparent paradox during the polygraph examination. It is true that the test seems to be most effective on the naive subject. It is also true that some of the narrative employed and descriptions given during the early phases of the examination are not only scientifically inaccurate, and overly simplistic, but when carefully and logically examined in their totality, some of the things that are said and explained in the early part of the procedure can actually be found to logically contradict things said or explained in the latter parts of the examination.

I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that an educated subject, both in terms of academic and polygraph specifics, could become quite insulted, if not annoyed, by many of the items in the narrative passed off as “facts” or truths. In fact, I can imagine the possibility of some narratives or explanations being so simplistic, factually inaccurate, and totally misleading, that an educated subject might actually become very annoyed and quite hostile during the commencement of the procedure. So instead of rapport being established, what you get is a feeling of hostility. I don’t think anyone enjoys being essentially belittled and lied to.

So the ethical question is: If the interviewer thinks it is alright to misinform and essentially lie to the subject, then would it not be more likely that if this “game” becomes transparent, then rapport would be impossible to establish, and in fact the subject would me more likely to be less intent on cooperating and being friendly, due to this perceived personal insult brought on by the procedure itself? It’s as simple as the tit-for-tat principle, a measured response in kind to a measured stimulus (a repayment in kind).

Glavlit wrote on Dec 19^th, 2010 at 5:01am:


You sound like an interrogator who is trying to implant fear. You sound like people in George's book who promise that they can tell the truth when they really can't. 

Are you an interrogator?