Dr. Toby Groves

Dr. Toby Groves

Dr. Toby Groves

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The “Untapped” series

“Untapped” provides experts the tools and inspiration to access their best thinking potential when it counts the most.
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Ethics

Ethics in The Real World

Ethics in The Real World

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An innovative and interactive session that taps the areas of neuroscience, psychology and biology to understand how science, emotion, and ethical decision-making interact.  Instead of critiquing how our minds are supposed to work, this session delves into the fascinating world of how our minds actually work when we face difficult problems where a ‘best choice” doesn’t seem to exist.  The talk will also explore why ethical codes have too often failed and how to improve individual and organizational ethical reasoning.

Major Subjects:

  • Using the Mind-lens model to understand ethical reasoning
  • Why model codes of ethics fail
  • The science behind organizations “Ethical DNA”
  • Understanding the psychology behind “Tone at the Top”
  • The interaction between critical thinking and ethics
  • Breaking myths about motivation related to decision making
  • Ethical decision-making under pressure
  • Are ethics and morals “fixed” or can we learn to improve
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Ethical Intelligence

Ethical Intelligence

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Ethical intelligence is the level of one’s ability to understand, develop and regulate their own ethical reasoning.  It includes ability to recognize and interpret ethical elements of a situation, determine best actions, and follow-through on ethical commitments.  While emotional intelligence involves the ability to connect with feelings, ethical intelligence focuses on how you interpret your feelings and make decisions from an ethical perspective.  The session tackles difficult questions beginning with whether it’s even possible to teach ethics in the first place.

Major Subjects:

  • How culture affects ethical judgment
  • The surprising relationship between empathy and ethics
  • Mindfulness and resilience
  • Ethical transparency
  • Ethical fading and bounded ethicality
  • The neuroscience of ethical information-processing
  • The psychology behind empathy, transparency and trust
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Bounded Ethicality: Exploring the Limits of Ethical Behavior

Bounded Ethicality: Exploring the Limits of Ethical Behavior

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We will explore the "Edge of Ethics” and the psychology of bounded ethicality including the invisible borders that exist in our ethical judgment.  Entertaining, and surprising, we will unveil hidden judgment errors when we face ethical dilemmas for which no obvious answer exists.  We will explore areas of ethical decision-making where people consistently predict they will do the right thing but rarely do so.  We will find out why people repeat stubborn errors of ethical judgment, and review steps which behavioral researchers have identified that can help us stop making these errors once and for all. We will identify ways to recognize our own errors and steps we can take to improve our ethical thinking.

Major Subjects:

  • Internal transparency
  • Implicit association
  • Concrete versus abstract processing
  • Temporal bias
  • Ethical fading

Learning objectives: 

  • Define attribution error
  • Identify 3 common ethical judgment errors
  • Identify 3 methods to reduce errors in ethical decision-making

Designed for:  Analysts and investigators, auditors, accountants, governance and compliance professionals, and those working in the IT, HR, legal, medical professions as well as executives, policymakers, and other decision-makers interested in developing a deeper understanding of their own ethical reasoning processes.

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Best Intentions: Why You Fail to Do What’s Right

Best Intentions: Why You Fail to Do What’s Right

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A primary reason we fail to do what’s right is that we neglect to see the important ethical aspects of a situation in the first place.  Therefore, training our brains to notice the moral and ethical facets of our environment is critical to ethical reasoning.  When we are aware of the ethical aspects of a situation, we lack objectivity about our own ethical views and rationalize behavior that supports those views.  This class explains the psychology behind why we fail to detect the ethical parts of a decision and what we can do to gain awareness and objectivity to improve ethical reasoning.

Major subjects:

  • Thinking approaches to help identify ethical elements of any situation
  • Uncovering our own unique ethical “blind spots”
  • Understanding ethical thinking patterns
  • Why our interpretations of past and future decisions are distorted
  • Unconscious bias

Learning objectives: 

  • Identify how reflection and foresight help to examine ethical decision behavior
  • Recognize what are normally hidden ethical components of situations
  • Indicate three reasons we falsely predict we will be ethical in the future

Level: Basic

Prerequisites:  None

Delivery Method: Group Live and Group Internet Based

Advanced preparation:  Not required

Hours: 2

Designed for:  Auditors, investigators, CPAs, analysts, attorneys, law enforcement, and governance and compliance professionals interested in understanding and improving their ethical decision-making.

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The Science of Ethics

The Science of Ethics

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This session delves into the fascinating neuroscience behind how our minds work when we face decisions with conflicting motivations or difficult dilemmas for which the best answer is not clear.  Attendees will explore real-life dilemmas and learn effective cognitive processes to deal with those dilemmas as revealed by the latest research in neuroscience.  The session draws on organizational psychology, cognitive science, psychobiology and even sports psychology to create an immersive experience and unveil the hidden ways our minds perceive and interpret problems.

Major Subjects:

  • Learn how to resolve competing motivations
  • Recognize ethically relevant behavioral cues at the individual, team, and organizational levels
  • Learn the cognitive tools to combat bias and situation blindness
  • Hear the methods that help teams debate problems effectively
  • Understand the science behind cultural norms
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Decision-Making

Systems Thinking: How to See Connectedness

Systems Thinking: How to See Connectedness

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Learn how to employ systems thinking to disentangle complexities, recognize and interpret patterns, and diagnose problems.  Understand concepts such as interconnectedness, synthesis, and emergence and use this understanding to foresee risks and build collaborative teams.  Learn systems mapping, causality and feedback loops to be able to more accurately assess culture, support good group decision-making, and bolster professional skepticism.  Systems thinking will help you have deeper insights into complex problems and understand how changes in policies, procedures and controls affect behavior.

Major Subjects:

  • Pattern recognition and interconnectedness
  • Foresight
  • Emergence
  • Complexity
  • System mapping
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Auditthink: New Thinking Strategies for the Future of Audit

Auditthink: New Thinking Strategies for the Future of Audit

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This workshop is designed especially for audit professionals and teaches the development of powerful, higher-order critical thinking skills.  Dr. Groves uses the very latest cognitive research related to auditing to teach reasoning processes that are most effective for accurate interpretation, better prioritization and smarter decision-making during the audit process.  The session is highly interactive and takes a holistic approach, helping auditors achieve a much deeper self-awareness of their reasoning processes.  This awareness provides a clarity of their thinking that allows them to examine the effectiveness of their approach and how to adapt it under changing circumstances. 

Major Subjects:

 

  • Develop characteristics that support critical thinking excellence
  • Understand why dynamic reasoning is important and learn how to achieve it
  • Learn a more effective approach to professional skepticism
  • Learn how to uncover hidden biases and in your reasoning processes
  • Greater self-awareness of your unique, individual reasoning processes
  • How to the new critical thinking applies in different types of audits including fraud auditing, process auditing, compliance auditing and more
  • How critical thinking affects reasoning, collaboration, and communication

 

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Patternicity: Seeing Patterns Others Don't

Patternicity: Seeing Patterns Others Don't

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Learn how to employ systems thinking to disentangle complexities, recognize and interpret patterns, and diagnose problems.  Understand concepts such as interconnectedness, synthesis, and emergence and use this understanding to foresee risks and build collaborative teams.  Learn systems mapping, causality and feedback loops to be able to more accurately assess culture, support good group decision-making, and bolster professional skepticism.  Systems thinking will help you have deeper insights into complex problems and understand how changes in policies, procedures and controls affect behavior.

Major Subjects:

  • Pattern recognition and interconnectedness
  • Foresight
  • Emergence
  • Complexity
  • System mapping
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Critical Thinking Masterclass

Critical Thinking Masterclass

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Ready to make radical leaps in your critical thinking?  In a world of rapid change and unreliable information, we need the ability to separate fact from fiction, recognize flawed assumptions, and have clarity under pressure.  This course will teach you how to audit your thinking and build effective reasoning strategies for all types of situations.  You will achieve dramatic improvements in judgement, problem solving, memory, and learning.  This course will make you more flexible, adaptable, creative and resilient, and provide a cognitive toolkit you can carry for life.

Major Subjects:

  • Cognitive bias
  • Conducting a “thinking audit”
  • Metathinking
  • Professional skepticism
  • Decision mapping
  • Habit replacement
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Memory enhancement
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Thinking Beyond Patterns: Finding Meaning in Your Data

Thinking Beyond Patterns: Finding Meaning in Your Data

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New technologies and analytical methods detect myriad patterns in our data, but what do they really mean and what decisions can they help us make? Is the underlying data reliable? Is it valid for the purpose you are using it? Cognitive technologies distance us from the context of our data, shrouding the meaning behind the patterns and how to apply the information for effective decision-making. New thinking approaches are required to move beyond simple recognition of correlations to insight into why relationships exist. This session will teach methods that give us the ability to discern the inner character of problems, to recognize why interactions occur, and what decisions can be made with the information.

Major Subjects:

  • Moving from “perceiving” to “meaning”

  • A new approach to professional skepticism

  • How to develop situational awareness

  • Why you should know the limitations of your data

  • The cognitive science of emotional intelligence

  • New brainstorming techniques

  • Data screening methods

  • Handling abstract, unstructured and extreme data

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Metathinking

Metathinking

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An essential class for those who routinely face complex, high-value decisions in high-stress environments including CEO's and CFO's, first-responders and surgical teams, policymakers, auditors, or investigators. This class takes you beyond critical thinking and teaches you how to use your cognitive strengths to develop a thinking system - powerful cognitive tools that enable better thinking under pressure, deep-structure insights for powerful problem-solving abilities, and highly effective communication when it really counts, all while building ongoing mental wellness for clarity and avoiding burnout.  Learn how to audit your thinking, synthesize your ideas, and achieve clarity under pressure.  The tools you learn will benefit all areas of your life.  You will be a more flexible, adaptable, creative, resilient, and confident thinker.

Major Subjects:

  • How to develop a thinking system
  • Understanding complex problem structures
  • Conducting a thinking audit
  • Skeptical reasoning
  • Systems thinking
  • Understanding memory

Learning objectives: 

  • Apply thinking approaches to improve emotional reactivity
  • Use “First Principles Thinking” methods 
  • Identify three decision-making biases that diminish thinking quality

Designed for:  Analysts and investigators, auditors, accountants, attorneys, law enforcement, governance and compliance professionals, or those working in the IT, HR, legal, or medical profession as well as executives, policymakers, and other decision-makers interested in improving critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

© Toby Groves, Ph.D.

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Unconscious Bias: How Implicit Associations Hijack Your Judgement

Unconscious Bias: How Implicit Associations Hijack Your Judgement and What to Do About It

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Unconscious associations are automatically and involuntarily spurred by people, situations and places around us. These associations profoundly influence our beliefs and attitudes and shape our actions and behaviors. Implicit associations ultimately affect how we interact with others, interpret evidence and make high stakes decisions. This fascinating session uses the latest cognitive and behavioral research and utilizes live implicit association experiments with the audience to help attendees unveil hidden influences that impact their decisions and teaches them how to use these new insights to improve their thinking.

Major Subjects:

  • The link between involuntary associations and decision-making

  • Unconscious bias at the individual and group levels

  • How cognitive diversity benefits group decision making

  • How stereotypes develop

  • Ethics and implicit associations

  • Using the mind-lens model to uncover hidden biases

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Fraud & Investigations

The New Psychology of Fraud

The New Psychology of Fraud

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This session features the latest behavioral science, interactive audience experiments, and compelling real-life stories to disrupt everything you thought you knew about fraud.  It will spur you to challenge “sacred cows” of the industry and help you develop better thinking approaches to detect, deter, or investigate fraud, waste and abuse.  Learn why many of our basic assumptions about fraud are flawed, why some widely accepted investigative practices are more harmful than helpful, and how auditors and investigators sometimes unwittingly assist fraud schemes. 

Major Subjects:

  • How we unwittingly assist in the production of misleading information
  • The neuroscience of psychopathy
  • Behavioral profiling
  • The new psychology of skepticism
  • Cognitive errors including attribution and overgeneralization
  • How experience, intuition and assumptions can cause cognitive errors
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The New Psychology of Professional Skepticism

The New Psychology of Professional Skepticism

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The complexity of our environment has outgrown old and superficial approaches to professional skepticism.  In this session, we'll explore a deeper understanding of skeptical judgment.  Attendees will experience fascinating demonstrations and learn about the hidden influences that impact skepticism. 

Major Subjects:

  • Dimensions of skeptical reasoning
  • The “mind-lens” approach to challenging faulty assumptions
  • Adjusting your “signal to noise” ratio
  • The role of situational awareness in skepticism
  • How to determine the reliability and validity of evidence
  • How to match skeptical reasoning to the environment
  • Learn how to uncover hidden biases that damage skepticism
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Finding Fraud

Finding Fraud

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 You’ll never think about fraud the same way again

Finding Fraud is a very different kind of fraud event. It presents deep behind-the-scenes research and multiple perspectives from all sides of fraud investigations that will challenge everything you thought you knew about fraud. The presentation features new analysis and never-heard-before details about some of the most instructive cases of our time. Forensic psychologists, interrogation experts, victims, auditors, law enforcement, researchers, and perpetrators provide a fascinating look at cases through their eyes. The session is presented by psychologist and researcher Dr. Toby Groves, a past CPA, fraud investigator, and business owner who was also at the center of a large, news-making fraud that went undetected until he turned informant. Dr. Groves, trained in forensic psychology and forensic accounting, brings content from his ten-plus years of fraud research and connections made from 500+ industry events including famous white-collar criminals and even prison to the stage in this fascinating session that is sure to thrill auditors and investigators.

Major subjects: 

  • Replacing the fraud triangle and other outdated “sacred cows” of the industry
  • Going deep behind the scenes of a criminal prosecution
  • Secrets of a forensic psychologist
  • What’s working in the fight against fraud
  • Why behavioral profiling isn’t helping and what will
  • An insider’s explanation of how fraud can go undetected for years or decades
  • How auditors and investigators unwittingly assist fraud schemes
  • Does more prison time and other punishment deter crime?
  • Why some ethics codes result in more fraud instead of less
  • The top mistakes made by auditors and investigators
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CyberPsychology: Conquering Insider Threat

CyberPsychology: Conquering Insider Threat

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The greatest cybersecurity risks your organization faces are breaches due to accidental, negligent or malicious activities of an organizational insider.  Together these represent the largest risk of financial loss and reputational damage to any organization.  In this crucial session attendees (IT and non-IT experts) will learn how to develop an organizational approach to insider threats and how to implement proactive approaches to recognize evolving risks and weaknesses.  Attendees will learn the important assets they can use to detect and thwart security risks.  They will understand breach tactics, behavioral and data patterns that indicate risks, and the most effective weapons against insider threats in the ongoing cyberwar.

Major Subjects:

  • Breach Tactics
    • Exploiting control gaps and control weaknesses
    • A review of tactics by type of attack
    • Psychological tactics used in attacks
  • Closing the gaps
    • A review of robust controls
    • Data access observables, changes in network patterns
    • A review of the audit, HR, IT and management relationships
    • Proactive approaches to recognize evolving risks and avoid breaches
  • Developing an effective insider threat program
    • Program transparency
    • Useful assets to recognize and thwart risks
    • Intra-organizational support and coordination
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Leadership

The Science of Great Leadership

The Science of Great Leadership

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Leadership skills have never been more important, in all industries and at all levels, whether executive or front-line employees.  Organizations succeed in meaningful ways when their individual members have the ability to inspire action, build trust, solve complex problems, coordinate effective teams, and resolve contentious conflicts without damaging important relationships.  This requires a deep understanding of human motivation, emotional intelligence, and nuances of cultural psychology.  This session teaches a powerful model that allows attendees to build their own core leadership skills as well as the psychology of performance and motivation and the social psychology of organizational behavior.

Major Subjects:

  • New research in leadership neuroscience
  • Assessing culture and tone at the top
  • Implementing an adaptive culture
  • The psychological science of resilience
  • How to inoculate organizational DNA with ideas that spread
  • The science behind why some groups “click” and others don’t
  • What causes organizational attitudes to shift and behavioral patterns to emerge
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Communications

The Art of the Interview

The Art of the Interview

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Conversations that expose truths, clarify beliefs, and uncover the underlying nature of events are amongst the most crucial interactions we can have.  These communications offer a fleeting opportunity to recognize themes as they unfold and to ask the best questions that glean valuable knowledge.  Whether interviewing for investigation, as part of an exploration or information gathering process, or hiring for a critical role, the interpersonal style that you employ will make all the difference in your success.  This session will teach attendees the nuances of an effective tone, how to ask questions that yield meaningful results, how to read important interpersonal cues, and how to adapt to different cultures or contexts.  Attendees will leave the session armed with tools from the latest behavioral research to conduct successful information-gathering interviews.

  • Behavioral cues as psychological markers
  • The psychology of baseline behavior
  • The hidden secrets behind rapport-building
  • Attributional interviewing
  • Determining appropriate questioning techniques
  • Handling conflict or confrontation
  • Adapting methods to match different contexts and cultures
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Advanced Communication and Public Speaking

Advanced Communication and Public Speaking

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Public speaking blends a diverse group of thinking and communication skills that will enhance your professional and personal life even if you’re not a public speaker.  These skills include the ability to form compelling arguments, build trust, present ideas persuasively, inspire others to action, adapt to changing circumstances, and see issues from competing perspectives. These skills elevate confidence and cultivate empathy. They support great leadership and enhance cooperative reasoning and problem-solving abilities.

Major Subjects:

  • The art and science of storytelling
  • Message-crafting and speechwriting
  • Communicating in different cultures
  • Improvisation
  • Metacommunication, para-linguistics and body language
  • High stakes situations, difficult conversations and presenting complex data
  • Persuasion and negotiation
  • Feedback and active listening
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Advanced Communication Skills

Advanced Communication Skills

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Learn communication skills that will enhance your professional and personal life.  Speak confidently and persuasively one-on-one, in the boardroom or to larger audiences.  These skills include the ability to form compelling arguments, build trust, present ideas persuasively, inspire others to action and see issues from competing perspectives. These skills elevate confidence and cultivate empathy. They support great leadership skills and enhance cooperative reasoning and problem-solving abilities. 

Major Subjects:

  • The art and science of storytelling
  • Message-crafting and speechwriting
  • Communicating in different cultures
  • How to ask great questions
  • Improvisation
  • Metacommunication, para-linguistics and body language
  • High stakes situations, difficult conversations and presenting complex data
  • Persuasion and negotiation
  • Feedback and active listening
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When the Facts Aren’t Enough: The Art of Communicating Complex Information

When the Facts Aren’t Enough: The Art of Communicating Complex Information

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The ability to illuminate truths and inspire action is an invaluable asset. It means painting a picture with information and articulating complex concepts with meaning, even to non-experts. This ability indicates that you not only have a deep understanding of your data, but a rich understanding of how people will interact with it in the real world. This skill requires the communicator to understand different perspectives, to “walk a mile” in the shoes of their audience. This interactive session takes a deep dive into the thinking perspectives and cognitive skills that help experts gain clarity in their messaging; gaining a more thorough understanding of their content and how others will perceive their message.

Major Subjects:

  • The cognitive science of persuasion, trust and belief

  • Design theory for data presentations

  • Communicating with audiences of varying technical knowledge

  • Detecting behavioral cues (when you can’t see or hear your audience)

  • Predicting the interpretational style of your audience

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Social Immune Systems: The Science of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Social Immune Systems: The Science of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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Equity and diversity in social networks stimulate deep learning, flexible thinking, and long-term health and wellness throughout the organization.  Diverse teams experience higher levels of satisfaction, more effective deliberation processes, improved decision-making, and heightened performance.  Learn the science behind social networks and how to “inoculate” your culture with social standards and norms that strengthen equity and diversity.  Learn how to build and organizational culture that inspires individual ownership in developing group norms and attitudes that are crucial for embracing diversity. 

Major Subjects:

  • Social equity – The social science of fairness, justice and equality
  • Informed inclusion
  • Development of cultural characteristics that support diversity
  • Neurodiversity
  • Gender and racial dynamics in different task groups
  • Improving intergroup attitudes
  • Unconscious bias and implicit association
  • Social framing dynamics
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Data & Technology

Data Science and AI for Non-Data Scientists

Data Science and AI for Non-Data Scientists

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This talk is an interactive and unintimidating exploration of the key points audiences need to learn about AI and data science.  We’ll take a practical, step by step walk through procedures that can be used to explore data, identify opportunities to use AI, and best methods of building predictive algorithms.  We will specifically identify analytical tools and statistical methods that are appropriate for a variety of needs and take a tour of a statistical program, see how analytical procedures are conducted and how the output is analyzed.  We will review machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, and brain computer interfacing.  This is a perfect session for those wanting to learn practical ways to apply data science and cognitive technologies in their work.

  • How to spot practical opportunities to use AI
  • How to build a predictive algorithm
  • Analytical methods appropriate for different types of data
  • Approaches that are effective for different types of problems
  • Methods to explore your data to find deeply hidden patterns
  • Assessing reliability and validity
  • Dealing with large numbers of variables
  • Handing unstructured data
  • Where to begin, how to learn more, how to access appropriate software
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CyberPsychology: Conquering Insider Threat

CyberPsychology: Conquering Insider Threat

Click here to request a detailed program outline pdf for this topic

The greatest cybersecurity risks your organization faces are breaches due to accidental, negligent or malicious activities of an organizational insider.  Together these represent the largest risk of financial loss and reputational damage to any organization.  In this crucial session attendees (IT and non-IT experts) will learn how to develop an organizational approach to insider threats and how to implement proactive approaches to recognize evolving risks and weaknesses.  Attendees will learn the important assets they can use to detect and thwart security risks.  They will understand breach tactics, behavioral and data patterns that indicate risks, and the most effective weapons against insider threats in the ongoing cyberwar.

Major Subjects:

  • Breach Tactics
    • Exploiting control gaps and control weaknesses
    • A review of tactics by type of attack
    • Psychological tactics used in attacks
  • Closing the gaps
    • A review of robust controls
    • Data access observables, changes in network patterns
    • A review of the audit, HR, IT and management relationships
    • Proactive approaches to recognize evolving risks and avoid breaches
  • Developing an effective insider threat program
    • Program transparency
    • Useful assets to recognize and thwart risks
    • Intra-organizational support and coordination
Learn More

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