In investigations, clients often ask us to “find everything.” They haven’t decided exactly what they want to know, so they ask for it all. Even if we could find everything, it wouldn’t be worth the time and expense, so, through a series of client conversations, we narrow things down to some basic objectives for each case, including client must-haves, nice-to-haves, and alternatives.

In due diligence background investigations, it would be easy to resort to the “find everything” method of investigations, and you do need to cast a wide net. But you want to add some focus.

After identifying the client’s level of risk, budget, time frame, and deal stage, we decide what to include. So, some investigations may need an official degree verification, while others don’t. Some backgrounds involve retrieving court records from the courthouse, while others just need online searching.

That’s why no two background investigations look alike, and our objectives change based on individual client situations. But, no matter how broad or deep we go and which components we include, all due diligence background investigations focus on these five basic goals: