A workplace investigation report serves multiple audiences simultaneously. The organization needs it to make decisions. The parties need to understand how findings were reached. Legal counsel needs it to assess exposure. An adjudicator reviewing a subsequent complaint needs to be able to reconstruct the process from the document alone.
A report that satisfies the organization but cannot withstand legal review is not a defensible report. A report that reaches the right conclusion through an undocumented process is not a defensible report either. Defensibility is a function of both substance and documentation.
What a defensible report contains
A clear description of the mandate. The report should state who retained the investigator, on what date, for what purpose, and under what scope. If the scope was limited, that limitation should be explicit. Readers who come to the report later, including adjudicators, need to understand what the investigator was and was not asked to examine.
A complete account of the process. Every step of the investigation needs to be documented: who was interviewed, when, in what format, and what they were told about the process. Documents and records reviewed should be listed. Any procedural decisions, such as a decision not to interview a particular witness and the reason for that decision, should be explained.
A summary of each party's position. The report should accurately represent what each party said, including their account of the events and any exculpatory information the respondent provided. A report that presents the complainant's account in full and summarizes the respondent's in a paragraph is not procedurally fair and will not survive scrutiny. The Federal Court confirmed in Marentette v. Canada (Attorney General) [2024 FC 676] and Qi v. Canada (Attorney General) [2025 FC 1783] that failing to allow parties to respond to contradictory evidence relied upon in findings constitutes a breach of procedural fairness that can result in a court-ordered reinvestigation. The report itself is the evidence of whether that opportunity was provided.
Explicit credibility assessments. This is where many investigation reports fall short. Finding that one party is credible and another is not is not a finding, it is a conclusion. The report needs to explain what factors informed the credibility assessment: consistency of the account across interviews, whether the account was corroborated or contradicted by other evidence, whether the witness had a motive to misrepresent, whether their demeanor was consistent with the substance of what they were describing. The reasoning needs to be visible.
The applicable standard derives from Faryna v. Chorny [1952 BCCA], which established that a credible witness is one whose account is in harmony with the preponderance of probabilities that a practical person would recognize given the surrounding circumstances. Credibility is not primarily a function of how a person presents. It is a function of whether their account is internally consistent, externally corroborated, and plausible in context. Reports that assess credibility on demeanor alone, without reference to these factors, do not meet the Faryna standard and are vulnerable to challenge on that basis.
The Association of Workplace Investigators (AWI) Guiding Principles set out the professional standard for impartial investigations and reasoned findings. They are widely regarded as the benchmark for credible workplace investigation practice. When structuring both the process and the report, alignment with AWI principles strengthens the defensibility of the findings and demonstrates that the investigator operated to a recognized professional standard.
Findings tied directly to evidence. Each finding should identify the evidence on which it is based. If a finding rests on the balance of probabilities between two conflicting accounts, the report should explain why the investigator found one account more probable than the other and what evidence supported that assessment.
Honest treatment of uncertainty. A defensible report is honest about what the evidence did not establish. If the evidence was insufficient to determine whether an allegation was substantiated, the report should say so and explain why. Overstating the certainty of findings is a common error that creates problems downstream, particularly when the losing party challenges the report.
Common failures that undermine defensibility
Reports that describe the investigation process in vague terms: "interviews were conducted with all relevant parties." Reports that present findings without tracing them to specific evidence. Reports that assess credibility based on general impressions rather than documented factors. Reports that reach beyond the scope of the mandate to make findings on issues the investigator was not asked to examine. Reports that recommend outcomes or disciplinary measures, which is generally outside the investigator's role.
Each of these failures creates a specific vulnerability when the report is reviewed by someone with an adversarial interest in finding procedural flaws. And in contested workplace investigations, someone almost always has that interest.
Where the report's obligations end
A defensible report does not require the investigator to share draft findings with the parties before the report is finalized. In Carreau v. Canada (Attorney General) [2025 FC 823], the Federal Court confirmed that procedural fairness applies to the evidentiary phase of an investigation and does not require investigators to reopen the process once deliberations have begun, or to allow parties to comment on findings before they are issued. Organizations that feel pressure to circulate draft reports for party comment should understand that this is not a procedural requirement, and doing so often creates more problems than it resolves.
The standard the report needs to meet
A defensible investigation report needs to allow a reader who was not present for the investigation to understand what happened, how the investigation was conducted, what evidence was considered, and how findings were reached. It needs to demonstrate that the process was fair to all parties. It needs to be honest about the limits of what the evidence established.
Meeting that standard takes more time than producing a report that gets to the right answer without showing its work. It is worth the time. The report is the investigation's only lasting artifact. When the process is challenged, the report is what gets reviewed.