Question: You are the director of a hospital quality assurance department. You are in the process of hiring a quality assurance staff person and your assistant director is in charge of scheduling and conducting the interviews. The interviews are conducted by a team of 3 people, including the assistant director. One of the members of the interview team comes to you due to concerns about the interview process. The person lets you know that there are illegal questions being asked of potential employees (When and where were you born? Are you married and do you have children? and other similar questions). Furthermore, the assistant director differs from the other two interviewers regarding the evaluation of each candidate. One candidate is a friend of the assistant director. This candidate was not asked illegal questions. Although the candidate did not seem qualified for the job, the assistant director wrote an excellent evaluation of her potential to fill the position.

Explain how you perceive the situation, and identify the major issues. How will you investigate the situation to determine if the information provided to you is true? If illegal questions were asked and if one candidate was favored, how you will deal with the actions of the assistant director? How could you avoid this situation happening again in the future?