Trust, But Verify

By: Paul Dank, PCI, CFE

Every successful person will agree with the idea that having all the facts and information available makes for better decisions, yet one of the most overlooked resources available to investors and business leaders is access to fact based intelligence.

Its available, easily accessible and very affordable.

As humans, we tend to rely on intuition and our perceived “good judgement”. We use logic to evaluate the situation, but we often are applying that logic to a fact set that someone else provided. “So and so” recommended this person, and we like and trust so and so, thus we automatically assume that they know the real story about that person. It rarely occurs to us that our referral source doesn’t actually know all the facts. It’s likely they have a positive impression of that person and possibly even some positive experiences working with them, but that’s about it. Intuition, logic and recommendations are essential to good decision making, but having more facts to support those only makes them better. Optimally, one can hire a professional who can provide complete, non-biased, factual intelligence that helps to reduce your risk and protect your investment.

As someone who works in intelligence and investigations, I am too often called in to try and clean up a disaster that need not have occurred. The bad hire who, if properly vetted, would not have been hired in the first place. The partnership that ended in tragedy that, if investigated proactively, would never have been formed. The investment that was made based on great projections and stories of past success that, if examined, would have proven to be smoke and mirrors.

What often happens is the client reports that “they were the good when we (hired/engaged/invested with) them, but something went wrong.” When we conduct our due diligence, we almost always see that the warning signs were there to begin with had they elected to look.

Hiring an expert to gather intelligence and to verify “facts” is not difficult nor costly. We have clients who have us confirm facts or look for omitted ones at a cost point as low as $100.00. Certainly more complicated due diligence costs more than that, but a consultation is free and if the circumstances prevent investigation, we will tell you up front.

Our solutions include:

• Reputational due diligence (domestically and internationally)
• Employment background checks
• Executive background checks
• Asset searches

If you want to make less mistakes, reduce your risk of losses, reduce wasted time and even damage to your reputation, get all the available facts. To borrow from President Regan, “Trust, but verify”.

Paul Dank, PCI, CFE

Paul is the President of Advanced Surveillance Group, a background check and corporate investigation agency with global reach, based in Metro-Detroit. Paul is a client of Mr. Denha as well as a trusted investigative resource. As a Michigan based professional investigative agency, all clients benefit from a legal guarantee of confidentiality that matches the attorney client privilege. For more information about Paul’s services, please visit ASGInvestigations.com or call him directly at 586-493-0300.