When Should You Hire a PI to Investigate Your Business Partner?

It goes without saying that launching a new business, managing it on a regular basis, and paving the way for long-term growth are no easy tasks. You may struggle to manage these operations on your own and should focus on building a reliable team that can assist you in meeting business goals. This is when you may feel the need to find an experienced business partner whom you can trust.

Collaborating with a business partner may lead to problems especially if you aren’t on the same page regarding business vision or long-term and short-term goals. But the main issue arises when their activities make you suspicious that they are engaging in criminal or unethical activities.

There are certain scenarios where you may need to hire a private investigator to look into their activities and run a background check. There’s no need to feel guilty about doing so, after all, you are trusting them with running a business that is so valuable to you.

Investigating Your Business Partner

Whether you choose to start a business in partnership with a friend or decide to take onboard a professional from outside your social circle, there are certain scenarios where you need to investigate them to protect business interests.

1. When You Intend to Choose a Reliable Business Partner

Due diligence background checks offered by private investigation firms provide insights into the professional expertise of potential partners. You can find out whether they have worked with businesses in the same industry before and if they were able to achieve business growth and sustenance goals in their past endeavours in a timely manner.

While candidates provide these details in their resumes and discuss detailed information during interviews, it’s crucial to cross-check the information during the business partner screening process to avoid costly issues down the road.

Ignoring background checks increases legal liability and can lead to huge problems, particularly for entrepreneurs. For instance, you may end up choosing a partner whose previous business ventures went bankrupt shortly after the launch due to incapable leadership or someone who might bring bad publicity due to unethical behaviour or policies.

For this purpose, you should choose a reliable private investigator for background checks on potential business partners who would create a tailor-made strategy to screen potential business partners for you. This way, you can ensure the prospective partner honestly shared information about their background and are less likely to engage in fraudulent activities in the future.

2. When You Are Suspicious That They Are Stealing Business Funds

The reason behind 30% of business bankruptcies is employee theft and many of these white-collar crimes are committed by executive-level employees or business partners. Moreover, businesses operating in insurance, finance, or healthcare industries are more susceptible to cash theft by the internal workforce.

Therefore, if your business suffers financial losses and you have a reason to believe that your business partner is causing losses, then it’d be a good idea to acquire the services of a PI to collect concrete evidence before taking further action against them.

The following signs can indicate your business partner is stealing from business funds:

• Unexplained changes in income or revenue
• Excess expense claims with no clear explanations
• Unnecessary business trips
• Refusal to give you full access to financial information

Under such circumstances, your best bet is to conduct an in-depth investigation. It will either expose monetary theft or clear the air and assure you that they aren’t lying which is essential for building a healthy business relationship.

3. When They Might Have Stolen Confidential Business Information

While business partners can assist you in building a business, you shouldn’t ignore the risk of intellectual property theft either and protect confidential business information from them.

You and your business partner should sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect the intellectual business property or intangible assets such as trade secrets, innovative business ideas, trademarks, product copyrights, and patents. This way, these parties are bound to refrain from sharing private business data with a third party and you can take legal action against them if they try to sell business secrets to competitors.

However, if you have suspicions that your partner has breached the contract and leaked confidential information without authorisation, then a private investigator can assist you in collecting evidence through state-of-art technology.

4. When They Are Accused of Unethical Workplace Behaviour

Considering the importance of creating a good workplace culture, organisations invest resources to provide a safe, secure, and stress-free environment to employees where they can show their talent and build skills. For this purpose, the business also arranges training sessions and effectively deal with those who don’t follow the organisational policies.

Thus, if a business partner doesn’t share cultural values, engages in unethical activities, and ruins the workplace environment, then you would benefit from investigating the matter with the help of a PI.

For instance, if an employee complains of sexual harassment or humiliating behaviour by your business partner, then the investigator can look into the matter on your behalf without delays.

They would examine the evidence provided by the complainant and carry out a factual investigation by conducting interviews of the complainant, witnesses, and the respondent to better understand the event(s) involving workplace misbehaviour and prepare a report for the management to take action.

Do you want to conduct business partner screening to choose a suitable partner for your business venture? Or do you intend to start an investigation against a current partner due to their involvement in fraudulent or unethical activities? Then hiring a private investigator is the right option for you!