Investigation Reports

I was thinking about it and realized that even though I have worked for over 9 years in Fraud Risk domain but it's recently that I have started writing formal reports. During my stint with companies in India, it was a trend that investigation report would be first discussed with concerned stakeholders and then email would be sent to document the findings, action taken and recommendations. Though we used to capture details of the investigation but never thought much about having formal structure of reports. I had done some experiments with creating a formal checklist type structure in which reports for standard cases (Card not present etc) were to be sent. and that was reluctantly adopted by teams.

Of late, I have realized that in certain organizational structures it is very important to have formal report format. It has lots of advantages over informal reports as due to the standard format, people know what kind of information would be available under which heading, any aspects which had been missed out during investigation can be retouched, documented records are available for any internal/external agencies and impartiality can be ensured.

Another thought which comes to my mind is that instead of spending time on writing reports, why formal meetings are not conducted with findings and then minutes are documented for tracking purpose. Some people may argue that nothing can compensate for having formal report but some others may feel that in a organization where only internal investigations are done by internal staff, there's no need to put in efforts in writing formal reports.

Though my personal preference is for a combination of both formal/informal meeting to discuss outcome of the investigation and submission of report containing all the facts along with recommendations. I would love to hear thoughts of others on this.

Above is based on my experience of working in organizations, where only internal investigations are conducted.