Elicitation: How To Get 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 in a discreet way, without the person knowing about it.

This makes it necessary to get the information directly from the person who owns it. But to get it without suspicion, without the other person realizing that the objective is to get information from him, you cannot ask him directly. People you use elicitation on may never find out that they gave important information.

How are elicitors

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 who are willing to help, even strangers. They are characterized by the desire to appear well-informed people who can talk about any topic and are very professional.

The elicitors get into 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 suspicious. 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 abilities of the elicitator. Some of them are presented below:

• Assume knowledge: pretending to have knowledge or associations in common with a person. For example, “according to the guys on the computer network that I used to work with …”
• Bracketing (put in parentheses): provide a low and high estimate to attract 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? Tell an extreme story in the hope that the person will want to get over it or finish it. For example, “I heard that the M company is developing an amazing new product that is capable of …”.

• Confidential bait: pretending 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 in defense of it. For example, “How did that company get that contact?” or “everyone knows that company B has better engineers for that kind of job.”
• Denial of the obvious: saying the wrong thing in the hopes that that person will correct your statement with true information. For example, “everyone knows that the process will not work, it is just a dream that will never take off.”
• Feigned ignorance: pretending not to know anything about a topic. This is going to make the other person talk about that topic, to teach you. For example, “I am 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 getting relevant information that we have is knowing what information is relevant. Of all that we know, what could be of value to other people? Once we identify that valuable information that we have, the logical thing would be to be suspicious of anyone who asks us about it. Never give information to people who are not authorized to know it, including family and close friends.

To avoid elicitation, you can do several things. Some of them are:

• Answer with information that is public, such as information that appears in the press.

• Ignore the questions and change the subject.
• Respond with a question.
• Respond by asking why are you asking me that question?
• Give a mediocre answer.
• Say you don’t know the answer, you don’t know anything about that topic.
• State that you cannot argue about the subject.

In a world where information is increasingly important, our personal information, work, etc., can be of value to other people. Fortunately, not all of our information is shared online, although this may lead to some people trying 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 to use elicitation. For example, if you want to know the tastes of a friend to give him a gift, you already know how to get the information you are looking for.