Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime: Secrets of Calculated Questioning From a Veteran Interrogator

179 Pages·2014·1.44 MB·English

by  James Pyle

Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime
Find Out Anything From Anyone, Anytime
SECRETS OF CALCULATED QUESTIONING FROM A
VETERAN INTERROGATOR
James O. Pyle and Maryann Karinch
Foreword By
Gregory Hartley, coauthor
of How to Spot a Liar
Copyright © 2014 by James O. Pyle and Maryann Karinch All rights reserved
under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book
may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented,
without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.
FIND OUT ANYTHING FROM ANYONE, ANYTIME
EDITED AND TYPESET BY KARA KUMPEL
Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design
Printed in the U.S.A.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pyle, James O., 1950—
Find out anything from anyone, anytime : secrets of calculated questioning
from a veteran interrogator / by James O. Pyle and Maryann Karinch.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60163298-2 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-493-1 (ebook) 1.
Interpersonal communication. 2. Questioning. 3. Inter viewing. I. Karinch,
Maryann. II. Title.
BF637.C45P95 2014
158.3’9--dc23
2013040946
Dedications
JIM PYLE
To my grandpa William Owen “Stump” Bagby, who made my childhood
special.
To Bob Brubaker, an old-Hollywood actor and keen salesman who made me
pay attention to myself and my talents.
To Ken Hobson, a superb U.S. Army student who paid the supreme price as a
soldier and intelligence professional in Tanzania in 1998.
MARYANN KARINCH
To my mother, brother, Jim, and Greg Hartley.
Acknowledgments
JIM PYLE
I want to thank Greg Hartley, a most insightful and intriguing individual and
friend, for his kind Foreword, and Maryann Karinch, for expanding my concepts
and understanding of good questioning and making my oral teaching
presentations, concepts, and formulas a clear and interesting read. For my good
wife, Deborah, who still believes in me nearly a quarter century later, and my
five “natural born interrogators,” Jimmy James, Corrie Anna, Sharon Marie,
Jamie Dale Dorothea, and Megan Marie Louise Pyle, for demonstrating the
curiosity and discovery that I finally recaptured for myself and have delivered to
you, dear reader, to consider and hopefully enhance your careers and life.
Among the band of brothers and sisters who defend this great land, I am but a
stepchild. I offer my most heart-felt thanks and respect to the thousands of U.S.
military, special warfare, intelligence agency, and wounded warrior students it
has been my humble privilege to stand before and teach the art of Human
Intelligence Collection. Thank you for your attention, your service, and your
sacrifices every day and from now on.
MARYANN KARINCH
Thanks to my curious and unflappable coauthor, Jim Pyle, and the great
friend and colleague who brought us together and contributed so much to this
book, Greg Hartley. As always, I want to tell Jim McCormick, my mom, and my
brother how much I appreciate their consistent support and helpful insights.
Thank you to the other contributors to this book whom I know personally—
Judith Bailey, Dr. David Sherer, Dr. Bob Domeier, Jeff Toister, Susan RoAne,
Peter Earnest, and Dr. Haven Caylor and his angelic, smart, and spirited children
Carter and Ammon Caylor-Brown—as well as those I don’t know, but whose
diligent questioning I appreciate, especially NPR’s Terry Gross, Fox News’s
Chris Wallace, Staff Sergeant Eric Maddox, and Jamie McKenzie of From Now
On. Thanks also to Colonel Harry R. Bailey (Ret.) for hosting the series of
meetings Jim and I had when we launched our work together. I also greatly
appreciate the support from Career Press; the team supporting us on this venture
is tremendous: Adam Schwartz, Michael Pye, Kirsten Dalley, Laurie Kelly-Pye,
Karen Roy, Allison Olsen, Ron Fry, Kara Kumpel, and Jeff Piasky.
Contents
Foreword by Gregory Hartley Preface
Introduction: What’s So Hard About Asking a Question?
Chapter 1: Changing the Way You Think
Chapter 2: The Structure of a Good Question
Chapter 3: Question Types
Chapter 4: Discovery Areas
Chapter 5: Essential Skills: Listening and Note-Taking
Chapter 6: Analyzing the Answers
Chapter 7: Questioning in Professions
Chapter 8: Questioning in Your Personal Life
Chapter 9: Fast-Track to Expertise
Conclusion
Appendix: Supplemental Exercises to Sharpen Questioning Skills
Notes
Glossary
Index
About the Authors
Foreword
by Gregory Hartley
Throughout my business career, I have watched people interviewing new
candidates or trying to resolve a problem by turning what should be a dynamic
conversation into a checklist: “Do you have any…,” like a game of Go Fish. I
say to these people, “You are talking at people, not to them.” Because business
is a subset of life, there is no surprise I find people doing the same thing in their
personal lives. Because of my background in human behavior, more than one of
these people has asked me to write a book about information discovery to help
guide their conversations with customers and others. When Jim and I were
talking about his concept for this book, I shared with him how desperately
people need these skills.
When I first met Jim, he was already an interrogator in the U.S. Army’s 82nd
Airborne Division, returning to Monterey, California, to learn Arabic. I had not
yet been trained as an interrogator. We spent most of two years there in Arabic
school together, and along the way I got to know Jim well. He was among the
brightest folks I met in the Army, and he had the added advantage of diverse
work experiences prior to becoming an interrogator. He would constantly make
observations about a person based on the words he or she chose. He would ask
why more than any adult I had met. I assumed going to interrogation school
would make me understand everything Jim had talked about.
When I left language school, it was off to interrogation school where Jim was
an instructor. In interrogation school, you spend most of your time on two
things: approaches, or how to get someone to “break”; and questioning, or how
to get their information. Most people can get through the approaches portion of
this training with lackluster performance, but questioning separates the
successful interrogators from the failures. There is just no way to fake
questioning; you need a logical mind, a clear plan, and a whole lot of curiosity
about what and why. Without that curiosity it just turns into a checklist, or sort of
a high-stakes game of Go Fish. Jim was a dynamic instructor with a spark for