Mostly, a private investigator’s job is to collect and organize data for his clients. But sometimes, a client needs something more: knowledge.
Often, my clients have hired us because they’ve found themselves in a bewildering and painful personal situation: a betrayal of some kind, by a spouse or business partner. These are situations in which the human heart, that magic something that interprets data and shapes it into a story that enlightens us, often leads us down the wrong path. When people are in the kind of emotional state that usually accompanies betrayal by a spouse, friend, or colleague, it’s particularly difficult to interpret facts objectively; we tend to read and re-read the information until it tells us what we want to hear, or what we have already convinced ourselves is true.
Sometimes, an emotional client might need a little help with the knowledge – an independent, objective observer who can offer alternate interpretations of the facts , without personal interest or emotion. A private investigator is your very own personal operative, the person you can rely on to gather the useful information and help you put it together in a meaningful way.
As a private investigator, I am very cautious about offering opinions. However, it is certainly my job, and my responsibility, to test and question my clients’ assumptions, and to sometimes serve as my clients’ guide through the difficult and painful
minefield of turning facts into knowledge. And it’s absolutely my job to be
sure that we gather the facts necessary to support that knowledge beyond any
reasonable doubt .
