Law Commons^™

The Hidden World Of Unconscious Bias And Its Impact On The "Neutral" Workplace Investigator, Ashley Lattal

Journal of Law and Policy

Workplace investigations into complaints of harassment, discrimination, and other allegations of workplace misconduct have become a critical method for employers to establish that they have complied with certain obligations to provide a discrimination-free workplace. As a result, the fairness and effectiveness of the workplace investigation process utilized by employers has increasingly come under judicial scrutiny. The nature of workplace investigations rests upon the assumption and expectation that workplace investigators are capable of being impartial in making findings of fact. For this reason, courts have identified the impartiality of the investigator as a key tenet of a fair and effective workplace …