Its application is additionally evident in disciplines ranging from psychotherapy, witness interrogation in crime investigations and in industry and commerce, both in oral and visual formats.
In its contemporary formulation, the techniques of oral debriefing were first explored in the US in the 1940s in New Deal projects to preserve the reminiscences of former slaves and unlettered rural folk, and then in Europe.
Born in 1912 and trained as a lawyer before becoming a journalist and writer, his fascination with the medium came soon after the tape recorder's commercial exploitation when he started interviewing a whole cross-section of American society in order to piece together a jig-saw of experiences.
The oral debrief has been sophisticated to the extent that its output is now a powerful means of extracting from individuals valuable knowledge that can be used to improve on past performance.
The most accomplished practitioners are the US military, which has developed vast archives of oral testimony of wars since WW2 specifically as an educational tool for successive generations.
With senior decision-makers the most common candidates, such debriefings are always conducted near the end of a person's tenure, although some practitioners are now using it on a more regular basis and in project management.
In the world of evidential gathering where rigorous substantiation is a pre-requisite for all experiential learning, the oral route is often more valuable than anything extracted from written sources.
Also, their spoken word is invariably a more efficient way of conveying the abstract and complex nature of elements like the nuances of corporate culture, management style and the often-obscure issues surrounding decision-making within groups.
The learning arises when the experience (from oral debriefing and other sources) is assessed and then assigned its own meaning in terms of individual and/or the organization's own goals, aims, ambitions and expectations.