A major penalty for breach of confidentiality is termination of employment. How to answer question on moving to another country for job? I want to encourage you to drill deeper on something you said in your letter: I did feel guilty. However, it is unlikely that the circumstances of your firing will be able to be overlooked by an employer who needs to trust your judgment with sensitive data, definitely for the foreseeable future, possibly for many years into your career. Even though I was only suspended for two weeks, it hurt so, so much. that one would be unable to resist texting a friend. No checking out salary information permitted! The communications team is often brought on board to develop strategy for organizational decisions that may not be public for weeks or even months. Yeah the world just being what it is, if youre this bad at keeping secrets, youre gonna get burned by it pretty quick. The LW blabbed, why would her friend have more self-control? A very long-term employee who did excellent work, as a joke, made up a fake news release that indicated we got the contract. Or at least, feeling like one should have been possible. You are fortunate to get the opportunity to learn it early when it hasnt resulted in severe long term consequences. Agreed, that immediately got on my nerves. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. If OP had never confided in any coworker about what she had done, it would still not be blind-siding to be fired for it. (Plus, were not sure how much of the inflation came from the coworker and how much came from their superiors. So, you've accidentally sent an email to the wrong person. Dont blame the co-worker for ratting you out. While most organisations take measures to prevent and protect against external cyber-attacks, many don't protect themselves against accidental leaks by their internal staff. I didnt read it that way, its not a question of the coworker being Untrustworthy, its a matter of the OP not being able to judge who she can trust to keep things quiet. How do I tell potential future employers why I got fired and have them still want to hire me? Posting confidential company information, good or bad, is not protected. Yep, I think its worth LW remembering that while she knew shed never leak anything again, her boss and co-workers dont. Its completely understandable that you were upset about it when you wrote in (and upset about it now). It sounds like youre taking responsiblity for your actions and are doing your best to move on. If OP doesnt recognize and own up to that, thats going to be a bigger red flag for potential employers than if OP said, I made a mistake, learned from it, and it wont happen again.. Its definitely not a spur if the moment decision. 2. Your tone is very this wasnt a big deal and I shouldnt have been fired for it, when it really should be I made a foolish mistake which I deeply regret and Ive definitely learned my lesson. Yeah, I agree. In such cases, the employee should be given the benefit of the doubt. She did her job. I think she got paid in sandwiches and the knowledge she was the only woman to neck with Nero Wolfe, though. Another engineer girl here, at a place where people have been fired for leaks and it hits the news when it happens: theres a warning during New Hire Orientation, and between that and our reputation, youre expected to know it. Send the attachment in a follow-up email and, in the future, attach the document before you even begin writing your email. If I ever texted a journalist about nonpublic information Id be fired. You texted proprietary information to a journalist. The best workplace I ever saw in this regard was a law firm that specializes in foreclosure (I am not a lawyer, but I worked there in another capacity). This disclosure was not inadvertent, and trying to frame it that way could backfire pretty hard. The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. Learn that about yourself, and move on. I meant inadvertently as they were confiding in a friend not willfully giving information to the press. Shouldnt she be in trouble too? and there she would be, going down with you. We can think things without saying them out loud. In addition to Alisons script, I think it also reflects well on you that you reported what you had done. Extremely good advice! When they took the only course of action they could have taken and still kept their job and notified your employer of your actions, you became defensive of your actions. (And thats before you tack on that LW thought it wasnt SO bad because he told Journalist Jason, who can keep a secret, as opposed to Reporter Robert, whos a real sieve.). trouble, it doesnt seem applicable. (Especially since termination hearings and the related records are often public records once the employee is terminated, so any concerned employer could just do a records request and get the whole story.). Think of speaking with a colleague like speaking with your boss. Theres no such thing as blind-siding once youve committed an infraction and people have to act on it. To say my friend was mortified would be an understatement. Box-ticking SA&T wont change security behaviors. The sharing of information is a violation of your professional duties and ethics and would get me 60% of the way to firing someone if I were your boss. As Brett said, there was definitely a record in this case. They did exactly the right thing to you. Later the coworker left the company and at company B was asked to write a similar report for the new company. The enforcement has to be based on the idea that the leak was damaging. It was the wrong thing to do, and Im sorry. The info I released did not in fact cause any problems, but I tremble now because it so easily could have, in even slightly different circumstances. I work for a government entity and believe me if you need a reminder not to text a journalist non-public information my line of work is not for you. Then whenever you send a message, you'll be given an option to "Cancel" at the top of the message before it's sent. She IS a rat! I was in tech there and had worked on a new interface for agents, lets call it TEAPOT. Your comment above is much closer to an effective track. +1000. I dont know the OPs financial status but if she needed the $$$ its not that easy to look at it as a kindness in the moment. I used to handle accounts, but could not handle my own. the coworker had an obvious physical feature that the poster mentioned, so the company was able to figure out who was discussing it in a public place and *fired* them for it. If the policy says people who tell information to non authorized individuals must be fired they could have been fired for not firing you. Yes, some employer will bin you, others might give you a second chance. Why are Suriname, Belize, and Guinea-Bissau classified as "Small Island Developing States"? The one time I filled a confidentiality-bound role (as a temp) the information I was given was specifically NOT to tell the person you were obligated to report. Same-sex marriage is going to be legalized tomorrow!. Its a risk when you ignore these compliance issues especially willfully. Yeah it totally sucks but now you at least have a chance to start fresh. In 2014 or so, I once slapped a superior in the face because they were yelling in my face because I was stepping on freshly mopped floors. However, were only human. She could have been a secretary or a spy; no one knows because she went to her grave never telling anyone, not even her husband. *(assuming that you did so)* She covers a totally different subject area so it never even crossed my mind that her career would be an additional conflict. I work in communications for a large organization and I see this as a trust issue with leadership. No work friendship is worth putting my familys financial security on the line. Perhaps the way you feel (felt?) If anyone required training to answer FALSE! Its understandable that you feel betrayed by your coworker, but she probably felt obligated to say something. And being mad at them is an effort to dodge responsibility and ownership of the actions that WERE at fault. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. The information was work i was working on at the moment and I emailed it as I needed to do work on my personal laptop ; I couldn't take my work station away whilst on extended leave overseas. I have personally learned that if you never want coworkers to find out something embarrassing or private about you, never ever tell them. Theres a difference between wishing you had a second chance (acknowledges they arent entitled to one) and being upset you didnt have one (expected that there would be one). If that got into the wrong hands it could even result in the end of civilization. Im sorry it happened to you, though, and it definitely stinks. Just keep it to yourself or youll get fired. And thatsnot great? She would ask every rep if they were using TEAPOT o service accounts, and would proudly exclaim, My daughter built TEAPOT! She thought she was connecting with the people who helped her. Nothing dangerous, and while I was there it honestly wasnt even anything that would be a big scoop or exciting dinner party story. I have absolutely no clue in your situation, but there are times when it really can be appropriate to let someone go without any second chances. how do you handle being pregnant at work? The communications person from the Marine Band was immediately fired when it was discovered she had leaked this information. And youre being very generous toward the coworker in saying she misunderstood and mistakenly misrepresented it. how do I tell employers I was fired for a video I put on YouTube? I know it isnt the actual incident since the details dont match (no twitter or cake pictures mentioned in OPs case), but I was assuming it was something like the NASA gravitational waves thing. Situations like this are one reason I think workplaces with confidential/sensitive information should regularly remind their employees of what confidentiality means for them, rather than leaving it as a blanket statement or only discussed during new employee training. But reasonable minds can certainly differ. As others mentioned, the breach is possibly a fire on first offense potential, but since they fired you after investigating slack that makes me wonder if you had too casual and friendly of chats with the journalists whose job it was for you to talk with. Dan is such a pain! She would have learned a valuable lesson and still kept her job. (For example, my BFF works at the Pentagon. Much as we like to think confidentiality is transferrablethat as long as the people we tell keep things confidential we didnt breach confidentiality to tell themits not. You arent entitled to a second chance to screw this up. While it is possible the line could be actively tapped/monitored by someone else, even if it was an unsecured line it would be reasonable to assume the home phone number on file for GSAs dad would lead to the dad. [important person 1] and [important person 2] are coming to my office for a press conference. You can bet Id be gone with no second chance despite my almost-20-years and ton of good work. Like, firing on the spot if I access my own chart. Its also possible that the way you talked to your boss about it cost you a second chance too- if you were anything other than mortified and taking 100% responsibility, they likely thought it wasnt worth trusting you again. Penalizing or firing such employees may lead to the loss of good talent and even create a negative impact on employee morale. Right. In a couple of hours, the news agencies were calling the federal government, to verify the news. From a government point of view, the only thing that matters is this: LW was trusted to handle confidential information and keep it inside the agencys control; instead she passed that information to someone outside that permission (whose job is to disseminate information to the public!) I think that WAS her second chance, and I think something she said at the meetings (perhaps about how the problem is the coworker for being a rat) blew that second chance. Instead, the employees found out by reading the news instead, which hurts morale. Just a bad situation. Eh, if a waitress at a homey diner calls everyone honey, I wouldnt call it condescending. We wont tell anyone. She should have told her this is serious and Im going to have to report you. Then at least OP could have avoided the slack room full of journalists escalation. 1) Slack vs text: doesnt matter. If I know that Senator Y is releasing a health care plan on Monday that would require mandatory surgery for every American, and he has bipartisan support for it, thats a much more specific news tip, and Id rather my friend just not tell me and save me the heartburn. Yep, we regularly are reminded about FERPA requirements (academia) and staff members have gotten in hot water for not promptly picking up student transcripts from the printer (for instance). When I finally came clean about it an interview, the response from the hiring manager was thats ridiculous, I would never fire anyone for that.. Unfortunately these days a lot of the regulators are crooked and will never do anything about problems without a lot of public pressure (and sometimes not even then). It can feel like the end of the world but I promise you it isnt. Rather than leading you on and allowing you to continue to work for them under a cloud of mistrust (and all the downsides that come with that), they made a clean break and released you to get a fresh start elsewhere. Look the UK Foreign Office is currently knee deep in a police investigation into information thats been leaked to journalists and the consequences are potentially extremely serious. Because, if you did the first apology option then I think it would be (more) possible youd get a 2nd chance. whatever you think is appropriate] to make sure it doesnt happen again.. Its to prevent covering of tracks or retaliation or extinction bursts (Im about to be caught for X may as well make the punishment worthwhile and do Y and Z too, or if they are acting with deliberate malign intent Im caught, better leak as much as possible asap). We go through training every 6 months, that we should NOT to tell the coworker or customer that we will need to report them. I agree with Alisons response. I did not get fired for the offense, but I genuinely learned a great deal from the experience and it changed the entire way I interacted with clients, for the better. That said, if this was going to be public anyways, your boss may have been inclined to write you up rather than fire you if you were sufficiently remorseful/petrified/mortified. I actually think this was a little rough of her mentor. Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. you can include that in there too, not as a way to cast doubt on their decision but as a way to indicate this was a fluke, not a pattern of bad judgment. Please keep reflecting on this. Even if the coworker had malicious intentions, they were following privacy laws and regulations. For most cases in the US, I'd expect it to be legal. And maybe you should go next week, because the slots love you and you always win. She was an employee of the agency, who shared it with the journalist. Youll also want to double-check any attachments. This makes it seem like they owe LW something, to be loving and release her to her best life. I dont know if it was to avoid track-covering or to prevent retaliation, but that was a specific part of the procedure. I dont think you have to be Catholic.). confusedabouteverything Forumite. Show prospective employers that you can reflect on your actions and learn from mistakes, because thats not at all what Im seeing here. I think the fact finding phone call cleared that up, otherwise OP would have said so? People are going think, If OP can minimize all the responsibility for this incident, she is going to be able to rationalize it away some other time in the future. Especially since the letter seems to have been written almost immediately after the incident, before their feelings had time to settle properly. I gossip too much, including at work. Coworker would let the other authorities figure that out. Leaking to the press can come with criminal penalties and you need to be very careful with how you report illegal/dangerous information for your own protection. Also, she wasnt a journalist I ever interacted with professionally shes a friend Ive had for years. And they also need to have an acute understanding that the timing of disclosure makes a HUGE, TREMENDOUS difference. While I was working there, I started dating an entertainment journalist who then covered some Marvel projects, and there were definitely things that happened at work which I did not share with him because of my NDA. read something out loud THEN realize that it wasnt public information. My mother got a reference-check call recently regarding someone shed managed and then fired. Removed a long string of comments about the condescension in the honey remark. You still have to go through the same information request as someone who doesnt work there. Agreed. OP has been mature about admitting fault, lets not undermine that by implying it was no big deal. nsx advanced load balancer documentation; . Ive seen many workplaces that dont spend an amount of time discussing confidentiality that is commensurate with its importance, or that dont go into specifics about when it is and isnt ok to tell somebody something you heard at work, and a general statement tends not to hold up to the in-the-moment excitement of oooooh I know THING about CELEBRITY! or whatever. Remember to be kind to yourself: youre human, you made a mistake and, as you said, youve learned from it. Thats a horrendously burdensome thing to ask! Is there a single-word adjective for "having exceptionally strong moral principles"? Because I said I wouldnt, I knew there would be consequences if something like your story happened to me, and also because, hows that going to look to a potential future employer that might value confidentiality equally highly? My mom worked in sunshine law for state government, and what constitutes a record is a lot broader than most people realize. So I guess my coworker could have misunderstood when I said I texted one friend, but I wish she would have talked to me about that first? Dang! But, bald facts, they told you not to do the thing you turned around and did. It might not seem to be that big a deal to you, but depending on what the information you shared was its really easy to use seemingly trivial information for profit. But unfortunately, the rules of your job are such that you justcant. Accidents happen inadvertently but this is not the case here. Those kinds of disclosures often rise to the level of immediate termination, which is what happened, here. Ramp up your privacy settings across all accounts. But it could be that GSAs dad had a code/password to verify it was actually him and the caller forgot to verify that first. I get that youre trying to take responsibility here, but your Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, I suppose suggests to me you still have a long way to go toward recognizing and acknowledging the seriousness of what happened. In a professional context, close friendships and personal trust arent always as ironclad as they can be in personal relationships, particularly when it comes to security and confidentiality. Maybe you havent worked with, or known anyone whos worked with, sunshine law and right-to-know, but this is incredibly serious for anyone who has. It goes through a game of telephone and the person at the end of the line gets mad that the first person would say such a thing. How could you have felt defensive about getting disciplined for that? Because I can almost guarantee that your reputation in that organization would never recover, even if you had remained employed. I want to caveat that when I originally wrote this, it had just happened and I was still extremely emotional about it, which is probably why I chose to leave out important information in my initial question. This is a GREAT way to position it. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. And Im happy to report that I have never shared that news (still remember it bcs this was so hard that first time!). And there was no social media then, so 100+++ times that now. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. Whether she is under FOIA or a state public records law, there are a lot of rules about non-disclosure of certain information. At the same time, though, its a program the average American would likely never have heard of and would give less than a crap about. Where I work, there are policies that state an employee that finds out about certain kinds of misconduct is mandated to report it or face consequences if it comes out that they knew and didnt report it. It was a big enough thing that they gave you a 1st chance. Sometimes they do, and other times they tell the person telling them that they or their actions negatively impacted another person that *they* are the ones in the wrong for telling them something that made them feel bad. Leaking anything that could put those things at risk is an insta-fire offense. Good Lord, no. Ive heard complaints from folks who arent allowed to give positive references to former coworkers who earned them. I just think it serves OP to choose a more benign explanation because it will help OP deal with the fall out of the situation going forward. If the answer is Yes then say that. Inadvertently, in my view, would be something along the lines of had confidential documents in a briefcase that you accidentally left behind at a coffee shop. I dont want to beat up on the LW, but I do think they fundamentally need to understand that the loss of trust made it impossible for the agency to give you a second chance in this position. But the judge's response to the request for a. The damage from most leaks isnt visible until much later, but it can be massive. What am I doing wrong here in the PlotLegends specification? Discretion and brand protection are as critical to this role as promotion and talking to the media. Oof this is so condescending! If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. I think in both cases, part of the concern is this retroactive removal of risk. Leaking private information in a huge breach, especially if that leak is to a journalist. If youre excited about a new, increased source of funding, that shows your agency has money to spend. and that person did what they were told to do and reported it. Confidential information is meant to be confidential and not shared with anyone. Ah, no, there definitely was a record if there was any form of written communication at all about the information. That was a stressful week for all concerned. The obligation to report a security breach doesnt include warning the violator. Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust. I thoughtlessly mentioned an embargoed announcement to a longtime friend in journalism before it was public. Those usually come out the morning of the speech. I replaced someone who had embezzled from the (small) company. I would not immediately snap into how can I report this? How should I explain that I'm looking for a job because my employer may be shutting down? Id instantly think that youd learned nothing, that no information we kept around you would be secure, and that anything we brought to you as far as behavior we needed you to change would suddenly be labeled as victimless and only because *truly irrelevant fact here* and unfair. I screwed up in grad school and had to go in front of an IRB board for being sent information that I hadnt gotten full clearance for. We also got early warning that legislators were encouraged to resign, a day or two before the press releases. You would never want someone to find out from the news media that they no longer have a job, for example. That the information eventually became public is not in any way relevant. Agreed, except for this: a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information. And by becoming the must fanatically trustworthy discreet person. If we receive confidential information, there are very specific and non-flexible procedures we have to follow to handle those documents/information. FIFTY?! It will also help you to not repeat the mistake in the future. Unfortunately, someone did leak the info so all the employees read about the information in a major business news website AND the local newspaper the night before the event despite the intention for the employees to hear the news firsthand at the event before it was released to the public. You can never rely on people to be 100% trustworthy, no matter how long youve known them. Not just confidential, but confidential from *journalists*!! They got caught. The only thing even slightly puzzling is why during the conversation with the mentor, mentor didnt say you do understand I am obligated to report this? Maybe mentor thought that might prompt LW to do something track-covering so it was better left going directly to the bosses without warning. This reminds me of the story of the Apple employee who left a prototype iPhone in a bar by mistake, before the official release. When it came up during her interview, the candidate said it was complex and that shed learned from it. And then they did it again. Even if you feel that way, definitely dont say that! This is so true. If yes, that is relevant to the question.
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