Professionals' accounts for work-related deceptions

Using interview and observational data, this article analyzes how private detectives account for using work-related deceptions. I place special emphasis on how practitioners' accounts draw on professional affiliations and organizational resources that are less available to individuals in their private lives. These affiliations and resources include economic and demographic characteristics of employers, practitioners, clients and investigative targets, state licensing, the profession's social repute, and asymmetries in specialized knowledge between practitioners and laypersons. The conclusion addresses how accounts for work-related deceptions benefit professionals through advantaging them over targets, obscuring harmful consequences of work, and helping them and their clients to avoid negative labeling.