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Courses/Communication/Nonverbal Communication

How to Interview Like the Dickens

Master proven interview techniques to outshine your competition, captivate hiring managers, and confidently secure your next job offer.

Created byDon Rabonworkspace_premium
BeginnerUpdated Jul 30, 2026
How to Interview Like the Dickens

What You'll Learn

check_circleIdentify psychological drivers that influence resistance, disclosure, and behavioral change during interviews.
check_circleApply rapport-building and strategic empathy techniques in high-stakes interviewing situations.
check_circleRecognize moments of internal conflict and use cognitive reframing to guide productive conversations.
check_circleDistinguish ethical influence techniques from coercive interviewing practices.

About This Course

What can Charles Dickens teach today’s professionals about conducting effective interviews? More than you might think. Drawing on the enduring psychological themes of A Christmas Carol, this engaging course explores how narrative, moral confrontation, and personal transformation can shape modern investigative and compliance interviewing techniques.

Using Ebenezer Scrooge’s journey as a case study in resistance, insight, guilt, and behavioral change, participants will examine how to identify underlying motivations, build rapport, and guide difficult conversations with empathy and ethical influence. The session connects literary analysis with practical interviewing strategies that can help professionals navigate high-stakes interactions more effectively while encouraging voluntary cooperation and meaningful change in conduct.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • Lessons from Charles Dickens' works applied to investigative interviewing
  • The psychology of compliance-gaining interviews
  • The "willing chair" and "unwilling chair" framework for assessing interviewee readiness
  • Building rapport to encourage cooperation and reduce resistance
  • Understanding how past experiences, beliefs, and memories influence interview responses
  • Guiding cognitive processes without coercion or improper influence
  • The confrontation continuum and the risks of overly aggressive interviewing
  • The regret factor, recanting, and legal challenges to admissions
  • Developing interview policies and minimizing legal and organizational risk
  • Practical interviewing, persuasion, and communication techniques for effective investigations

Your Instructor

Don Rabon
Don Rabon

Owner - President | Successful Interviewing Techniques - a Division of Highly Motivated Inc.

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star28 reviews

Don retired as Deputy Director Western Campus, North Carolina Justice Academy, and was formerly manager of the Investigations Center of the North Carolina Justice Academy. Don has law enforcement experience in rural and municipal law enforcement agencies and instructional areas including Interviewing, Detecting Deception, Rapport Building, Interrogation, Persuasion, Audit-Related Interviewing, Investigations, and Investigative Discourse Analysis. For over a period of 35 years, his interviewing instruction and investigative assistance has been provided to related professionals in 46 U.S States as well as Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, Belgium, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Trinidad, Barbados, Singapore, Ireland, and England. In addition, he has provided training to Federal, State, and Local Criminal Justice Personnel, NATO Counterintelligence Personnel as well as private sector investigative and corporate security personnel. Don has his A.A.S. in Criminal Justice, from Davidson County Community College and a B.S. in Criminal Justice Administration, from East Tennessee State University. He has performed advanced studies at Eastern Kentucky University and has military experience with the US Army. He is a published author of 4 texts: Interviewing and Interrogation 2nd edition; Investigative Discourse Analysis 2nd Edition; Persuasive Interviewing; Fraud Related Interviewing and is editor of the interviewing focused newsletter, Hamlet’s Mind.

Credit Information

Is this course eligible for my CPD requirements as a Canadian CPA?

Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.

Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.

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Frequently Asked Questions

We are a registered provider with 327+ associations and regulatory bodies worldwide. We operate across 29 global markets including Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. Every course page clearly displays its specific accreditations. Upon completion, you receive a professional certificate that can be validated online. Our certificates include all necessary accreditation details, credit hours, and completion dates, and are formatted specifically to meet the submission requirements of most global regulatory bodies.