Elicitation: how to get them to give us information

What is elicitation? This strange word that does not even appear in the dictionary is the translation of the English word “elicitation”. Its meaning refers to the implementation of techniques that serve to collect knowledge or information about people. Therefore, elicitation is nothing more than a technique used to obtain information discreetly, without the person knowing.

This makes it necessary to get the information directly from the person who has it. But to get it without suspicion, without the other person realizing that the objective is to get information from them, you cannot ask them directly. The people on whom elicitation is used may never know that they gave important information.

What are the elicitors like?

A person with great knowledge of elicitation has to know a lot about people. About how they behave and the existing cultural differences and predispositions. Elicitors are usually people eager to help, even strangers. They are characterized by the desire to appear as well-informed people who can talk about any topic and are very professional.

The elicitors expand on some topics and talk a lot about gossip. They tend to correct others. They tend to believe that other people are honest and decline to be distrustful. When asked honestly they tend to tell the truth. But they also tend to convince others that their opinion is the true one.

Elicitation techniques

There are many elicitation techniques. The use of each one will depend on the moment and the skills of the elicitor. Some of them are presented below:

Assume knowledge: pretend to have knowledge or associations in common with a person. For example, “according to the network guys she used to work with…”Bracketing (put in parentheses): Provide a low and high estimate to entice them to say a more specific number. For example, “I guess rates will have to go up soon. I guess between five and fifteen euros.” To this they would respond: probably around seven euros.Can you finish this?: telling an extreme story in the hope that the person will want to get over it or end it. For example, “I heard that company M is developing an amazing new product that is capable of…”.Confidential bait: intend to disclose confidential information in the hope of receiving confidential information in return. For example, “just between you and me…”Criticism: criticizing an individual or organization in which the person has an interest in the hope that that person will disclose information defending it. For example, “how did that company get that contact?” or “everyone knows that company B has better engineers for that type of work.”Denial of the obvious: saying something incorrect in the hope that that person will correct their statement with true information. For example, “everyone knows the process won’t work, it’s just a dream that will never get off the ground.”Feigned ignorance: pretending not to know anything about a topic. This will make the other person talk about that topic, to teach you. For example, “I’m new to this field and could use all the help I can get” or “how does this work?”

How to avoid elicitation techniques

The first step to prevent them from obtaining relevant information that we have is to know what information is relevant. Of everything we know, what might be valuable to other people? Once we identify the valuable information we have, the logical thing would be to be suspicious of anyone who asks us about it. You should never give information to people who are not authorized to know it, including family and close friends.

To avoid elicitation, several things can be done. Some of them are:

Respond with information that is publicsuch as information that appears in the press. Ignore the questions and change topic.Respond with a question.Respond by asking why are you asking me that question?Give a mediocre answer.Say that you don’t know the answer, you don’t know anything about that topic. State that you can’t argue about it.

In a world where information is increasingly important, our personal information, work information, etc., can be of value to other people. Luckily, not all of our information is shared online, although this may lead some people to try to obtain that information. They may try to steal it from us using elicitation techniques. But now we know how to recognize and avoid them. Of course, at other times we will be the ones using elicitation. For example, if you want to know the tastes of a friend to give them a gift, you already know how to get the information you are looking for.

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