A faculty member raises a concern about a colleague. The institution receives the report. Within a few weeks, an investigation is underway. Documents are requested. Witnesses are interviewed. A formal process is in motion. The matter, which began as one person's discomfort with another's behavior, has become something with legal weight.
Sometimes this trajectory is correct. The original concern, even if it started small, involved an issue that required formal handling.
Often it is not. The original concern could have been resolved with a conversation (a theme also in The Conversation That Never Happened). The investigation, once triggered, generates significant cost (institutional, relational, sometimes financial) without producing a result better than what the conversation would have produced. By the end of it, no one is happy with the outcome, and the underlying issue often remains unaddressed.
The Mandatory Investigation
Some matters require investigation, full stop. The institution does not have a choice.
Allegations of sexual misconduct under Title IX. Allegations of discrimination protected by federal or state law. Reports of research misconduct, fraud, or financial impropriety. Concerns about physical safety. Anything that triggers a mandatory reporting obligation under the institution's policies or applicable law.
In these cases, the path is clear. The matter goes to the appropriate office, the investigation runs, and the result follows the process. Trying to handle these informally is both procedurally wrong and substantively risky.
If you are uncertain whether a matter falls into this category, default to formal. The cost of formalizing what could have been informal is lower than the cost of informalizing what should have been formal.
The Optional Investigation
Most matters that escalate to investigation are not in the mandatory category. They are in a gray zone where the institution has discretion, and the discretion gets exercised inconsistently.
A faculty member feels disrespected by a colleague's email. A chair's communication style is making people uncomfortable. A department's culture has soured around a specific pattern of behavior. A graduate student is unhappy with their advisor's responsiveness.
In each of these cases, there are paths. The matter can be addressed informally through a conversation, a coaching engagement, or a facilitated dialogue. It can be addressed formally through a complaint process, an investigation, and an institutional response. Both paths are technically available.
The path the institution chooses is often determined by who shows up first, what office they walk into, and how the intake conversation unfolds. The substance of the matter often plays a smaller role than the procedural circumstances of how it was raised.
How to Tell the Difference
The chair or dean who wants to handle these situations well is asking, at the intake stage, a specific question: what is the actual remedy this person is seeking?
If the remedy is recognition or acknowledgment ("I want this person to understand what they did was wrong"), the matter often resolves better through a structured conversation than through an investigation. Investigations rarely produce acknowledgment; they produce findings.
If the remedy is a specific institutional action (a removal, a censure, a documented record), an investigation may be the right tool because it produces a record that supports the action.
If the remedy is to be heard, the structured conversation is often what the person actually wants, even if they used the language of complaint or investigation when they walked in.
Asking this question, gently, at intake is one of the highest-leverage things a leader can do. It honors what the person is actually seeking rather than defaulting to the most institutionally familiar response.
The Cost of Choosing Wrong
When optional investigations are run instead of conversations, the cost is significant. The institution spends weeks of leadership time. The parties become more entrenched. The original matter gets reframed by the investigative process. Whatever resolution emerges is often less satisfying than what a conversation could have produced.
The formal path is also worse than most people expect at delivering a verdict. Roughly 70 percent of employment discrimination cases in federal court end in settlement, meaning an uncontested termination rather than a ruling, and about 1 percent reach trial. Clermont and Schwab, who report the settlement figure, caution that it "does not imply lots of success for plaintiffs." Most formal processes do not end with anyone being told they were right.
When required investigations are run as conversations, the cost is different but also significant. The institution exposes itself to compliance risk. The complainant may feel their concern was minimized. The matter may resurface formally later, with the institution now in a weaker position to handle it.
Both errors are real. Getting the intake judgment right matters. The chair or dean who can hold the question (is this formal or is this conversational?) at the moment of intake, rather than after the path has been set, is doing some of the most important work in academic leadership.