2. But also to say that when you work with confidential info, the impulse to share is a common one, and managing it is something you need to be on top of from every angle. She showed no contrition or reflection. Having a natural, human reaction doesnt mean shes in the wrong field. No. But I agree that reporting coworkers for actual errors that actually affect the company isnt ratting. And it doesnt sound to me as though the OPs coworker was in any way a rat. I reminded him that anything sent in our work email is subject to FOIA and not really completely private from our employer, so if he was going to continue to work against the plan, use personal email. Ethically, you dont have to do anything. Where did you go from here? I think its also something to do with the fact that if you tell a journalist something newsworthy, youre not just talking, youre offering a thing of (potential) value, which is an entirely different action from sharing news with a friend. Ah, no, there definitely was a record if there was any form of written communication at all about the information. Journalists seek out and report information thats their job.. No one was allowed to approach her and her desk for the week and every night she locked up the removable ribbon from her typewriter because it could be unspooled and read. I agree. The protected classes are race, age (40+), sex, national origin, religion, or disability. I consider it my greatest ethical obligation in my job, because I have been entrusted with sensitive information and I treat it like Id want mine to be treated. And if it is a part of that, the coworker was obligated to report it! I think one can be upset at not getting a second chance without feeling necessarily entitled to one. How do I make amends and go about apologizing to former manager(s) after being dismissed for gross misconduct? Her best chance of moving forward and looking as good as possible in an interview is to accept full responsibility and say that she made a mistake and learned from it. It seems like LW has had time to process and isnt being combative. I understand that you get that what you did was a very big deal as a single event, but I think you might need to spend some more time examining for yourself why you would describe this as a victimless crime. The fact that your friend didnt as far as you know tell anyone else about your bombshell doesnt meant that nothing happened. My late dad worked for a government defence research agency for most of his career. But how do I explain this to show I learnt from my mistake and get a new job ? Theres truly no compelling reason to break confidentiality here. This. But what you do when youre on the other side of the inbox? You knew better. I can't remember the details, but there was a point about the fact the word "confidential" added in every e-mail by such a notice wasn't actually helpful, since tools that looked for the word confidential were flagging everything up, including a large number of false positives. Its not great, but some breaches really are that serious, and employers cant always be like the library giving amnesty for late fees if people bring the books back. January 31, 2022 . In McMorris v. (Even before learning it was to a reporter!) I am now going to assume that its exactly that. Fired for gross misconduct because I sent confidential information to personal mailbox - how do I get another job? Wrong is wrong- regardless of scale of the offense, and LW has no one to blame but themselves. I am trying not to be too harsh but yes you screwed up. The employer has a policy against this and everyone working there has signed that they read the policy. The only thing an employer may not do is make employment decisions based upon you being a member of a protected class. If youre excited that your agency is moving into a new building or buying land someone could buy up the new building or land ahead of time for profit. LW doesnt seem defensive at all here, and its okay to feel upset while still taking ownership of their actions. It's hard to answer this question without specifics, but it strikes me as very important to differentiate between an accident or mistake in the sense of "oops, I did that by unintentionally" versus misconduct, as in "this was against policy and I deliberately did it anyways" regardless of whether you knew about the policy or had a good reason to do it or not. Screw-ups happen. I am very sure they didnt want to fire him. Yep. "You can call or text and say, 'Call me, you were sent the wrong information.' " She recalls one time when a co-worker accidentally sent an email calling a client a "tough cookie" to the. when we had a high school shooting, a student I knew (10 y old) and who got into it (gladly uninjured) got a visit from his own uncle who was a journalist that very evening, who came to visit the parents and then proceeded to try to get his nephew to talk about the details. Regardless of what word you use when you disclose what happened, understanding that difference, owning up to it, and showing how you've changed as a result is your best hope of gaining future employment. Received someone elses confidential email? Were considering opening ours up to partner agencies, and I spent a good two hours cleaning up the old messages in the general chat. Nowadays with mobile devices, email and the cloud, it is extremely easy to share files, easy enough that we may accidentally send and share them to the wrong person. Quite recently, a client of my firm contacted us to say they had heard staff in a bar gossiping about another client. If people really need jobs, they need to act like they really need jobs. Oh, its possible to be a rat in the workplace. I wrote back and asked, Is there more context for why your coworker thought that? You can do this, if you keep working hard on yourself. While it didnt result in any press, it was obviously a major lapse in judgment and I understand why it resulted in my termination. If theyd covered up for her/not removed her access to confidential info and she did it again, their jobs would be on the line too the next time. But how do I explain this story to future employers? Those kinds of disclosures often rise to the level of immediate termination, which is what happened, here. I think interviewers will pick up on the equivocation in your language here. And it could be part of the reason why the story was a bit incoherent, too she went from sort of uncomfortable to really, really uncomfortable. Many types of information are protected only during specific time frames insider trading comes to mind as a particularly nasty one disclosing inside information about a pending large contract award or trade is absolutely firable. I have also had to recommend the firing of a personal friend. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. But it sounds like it doesnt really matter that HR jumbled the details because neither was a permitted thing to do anyway. If its the government, theyd be defending Area 51 unless its a false flag operation, and the point is for the invasion to occur, but show nothing suspicious, because the government already relocated all the aliens! I dont know. I suspect youre referring to a case where a patient was put in danger, but where no obvious harm occurred like a psychiatrist consensually sleeping with their patient, which an unscrupulous psychiatrist might see as a victimless crime, but which is incredibly risky behavior. The OP actually committed a fairly serious breach. You colleagues are often the closest people to you, so it makes sense to want to tell them about your problems (which include work screw-ups), but you cant. And depending on the circumstances, if the co-worker knew you broke the rules and didnt report it, then THEY could be in trouble also. OP, specifically following up with Alisons advice above, you were fired because you showed your employer that your first reaction when learning about confidential information was to text (1) someone outside of your company who was not authorized to know that information and (2) someone who was a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information EVEN IF you only know them as a friend and EVEN IF you promise pinky swear that they would never ever do that. I was under the impression that most big companies had a policy against telling a reference checker anything beyond dates of employment. 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? 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. that one would be unable to resist texting a friend. It stinks but in this industry, thats a deal-breaker for many. Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. I wont get into too many details, but where I work had a plan that was controversial and there was both opposition to it, internal and external. For me, that was it. Or did you double down on not my fault, not a big deal, and co-worker shouldnt have said anything? Whilst Im sure the OP is a perfectly nice person, theres a reason that there are office shootings and other awful things, some people are not. Taking full responsibility isnt just the better moral choice, its the more effective one. 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). Whats not fine is trying to take somebody elses, or dramatically moping about it until someone gives me theirs. Back in the dinosaur era (early 80s) the directors secretary was the only one tasked with typing up yearly evaluations on high-level staff. Certainly not an electronic blog. I was fired from a job and when I started interviewing for following ones, I kept trying to spin it and it did not work at it. someone in another department saw the post, reached out to the person who made it and asked for information about the person they had heard it from. Breach of confidentiality can be described as an act of gross misconduct, so deal with issues that arise in a timely manner, in line with your procedures and look at any previous cases to ensure fairness and consistency. Learn how to protect your investment management firm through intelligent email DLP. Perhaps Archie neglected to mention it. Whose to say OP isnt right that the coworker had it out for her? How to answer question on moving to another country for job? Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. And it makes sense that it is. Even if this person had not turned her in, there was this bomb just sitting there waiting to go off. Its definitely not a spur if the moment decision. That may not be the right wordbut Im having trouble finding the right one. Thats how a lot of people get found out in the end, it doesnt just stop with telling that one friend. (And even then, the existence of the record has to be disclosed even if the actual record is not disclosed. I dont know whether you meant it this way, but the co-worker is not untrustworthy for reporting this. I definitely learned my lesson, and it was a hard one, and one that I will regret for a very, very long time. This is a bad enough screw-up that I would be contemplating a career change, or at least a pivot to an area of communications where things like confidential information and media embargoes arent ever a factor. She should have just sat with that feeling and let it fuel her resolve to never share confidential info with an outside party again. 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. How risky is sending a sensitive work email to the wrong person? And thats still very unrealistic / way off-base, if OP truly gets why this was a slam-dunk decision, in that particular circumstance. You made yourself very vulnerable, your mentor knew that, and unfortunately, youre now bearing the consequences. How do I explain to those potential future employers that the only reason I got fired was because I was ratted out by a coworker for a victimless mistake and was fired unfairly, without sounding defensive? how do I get out of an active-shooter drill at my office? I went to a church where I attended youth group, sat outside, and repeated my news over and over to Jesus for about three hours before I felt certain I could keep it from anyone else (note that no one else was anywhere nearby). If you talk about sensitive stuff in public you best be sure youre actually anonymizing what you have to say. This is a situation that youre going to have great difficulty explaining away and I might prefer a resume gap to being at such a disadvantage. 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. TootsNYC is talking about this latter case. I think people are reading defensiveness from the qualifiers probably and suppose. I can sympathize that this is still very raw for OP and perspective will only come with more time. But even if there is no danger, an obligation to report is just that. Phrase it as a serious learning point, because you sure as hell aren't going to do it again after getting fired. 4a) Coworker did not owe (and usually would be discouraged from giving) notification to the OP. Once info is out in the community, you have no control over where it goes and any and all ramifications. You hear something genuinely classified and blab it too because its so cool? If you want to work in comms, you need to be crystal clear that the TIMING of disclosure is a crucial issue. If we receive confidential information, there are very specific and non-flexible procedures we have to follow to handle those documents/information. Regardless of what word you use when you disclose what happened, understanding that difference, owning up to it, and showing how you've changed as a result is your best hope of gaining future employment. Sometimes they go so far as tell the bearer of the news that they now have to soothe them bc its their fault they feel bad. So, the implication is actually the opposite of giving your feelings 100% credence its saying, separate how you feel from what you do. Say I have a friend working on a presidential campaign, and she tells me theres a bunch of debate about the candidates strategy, I have to decide whether to mention that to my colleague who covers the candidate. but if you mess up and by the skin of your teeth get away with it, just DO NOT talk about it with anyone at the company. Not because my coworker ratted me out, but because I came to her for guidance and instead of being straight with me, she made me think it would be OK only to be questioned hours later. Its understandable that you feel betrayed by your coworker, but she probably felt obligated to say something. Also in any governmental job or any job governed by many laws and regulations (such as medicine, law, dentistry, etc) they are laws and compliance regulations in place that must be abided by and every employee had to sign such an agreement usually yearly but at least upon hiring. Oh, thats a risky tack for OP to take if they want to stay in their field. Either way, if you commit an offense, its best to never go with its not that big of a deal anyways. Owning up to your mistakes at the right time is hard and the natural instinct to defend yourself is strong, but ultimately thats the best thing to do and garners respect. Is this the appropriate place to bring up Anthony Scaramucci not even uttering the phrase off-the-record during his bizarre call to Ryan Lizza and then being upset when his words were published? Acidity of alcohols and basicity of amines, Using indicator constraint with two variables. A misdirected email describes an instance where an email is sent to the wrong person or the wrong attachment has been added to an email that has the correct recipients in it. All people, of all ages, are capable of errors in judgment. I am assuming you had a clearance of at least Secret. When I worked for the bank in the security investigation department, we had systems in place that monitored Famous Peoples accounts and would flag them if they were opened/touched. (Plus, were not sure how much of the inflation came from the coworker and how much came from their superiors. Sometimes he wasnt working on confidential stuff, and he could come home and geek out over what he was doing if he wanted. Because when your mentor is a coworker at the same employer, you cannot, cannot speak as freely. In fact, if I ever got a query from someone I knew, I was required to hand off the query to a colleague. Yeah, this is a big part of it. It has to be violent sexual assault before theyll even consider responding. I deal with it by having friends in the firm who I can say it to (but not in a bar!). Sometimes it can be a blessing in disguise. If you own your mistake, meditate on it, learn from it, and learn to tell the story of how you learned from it, then you might be able to get another job in the communications industry working for a company that does not handle sensitive client data, or in another industry where there are no potential confidentiality issues with your job. I understand that the breach was very bad and that the organization needed to take some disciplinary action, but it seems to me that firing an employee who fessed up to something like this to a senior coworker sends the message: If you mess up bad enough, dont tell anyone. In my role there I was sometimes privy to confidential information that was not to be shared with the public. Spek raised a good point- find out what your HR policy is so you know what to be prepared for in an interview. Identify the cause of the information leak. Having worked in communications and journalism for the past 15 years, I think this ishonestly really bad. People just seemed to forget that with Epic, even one second of accessing a chart is recorded. My point is that you learn how to share AND maintain confidentiality. We literally filled a room with records for them, and 99% of it was people asking what flavor of donuts to bring to a meeting or requesting copies of informational flyers. If youre found to be lying, thats an instant rejection in a way that a well-explained firing would not be. This is one reason why I could only ever give a vague explanation of what my dad did. Same here (investing). Mandatory reporting is a thing that exists. If I were you, I would examine WHY I decided to tell my journalist friend the info. I think its very strange that so many commenters are trying to police the LWs feelings about the coworker. It could also end poorly if the employer actually sees a job opening posted for the position the LW claims was eliminated. So yeah, confidential stuff is confidential for a reason. RIGHT NOW it is totally privileged information and it needs to be treated that way. Noooooo. It should go without saying: a breach of confidentiality could and would wind up in a bar complaint in my jurisdiction. Please keep us updated and let us know how things work out for you. So, I can talk about it, I can say Omg, there was one scene that I was just like SuperCheese! and rolling my eyes. 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. I do have to wonder if the hospital failed to educate its employees on how freaking serious that kind of breach was, And also failed to inform them that the system tracks who looks up a particular patients record. So, if you find out that company X is going to be reporting a surprising drop in profits next week, the person in the company who told you this is gone. And it is so hard! Also, legally email addresses themselves dont typically count as 'personal information' as they are contact addresses and are treated in similar ways to phone numbers legally, as opposed to, say, identifying information like full name, DOB and home address all in one document. The misrepresentation of what happened is my concern. Was the friend a journalist, or is there something else that would explain why she said that? The reply: Yes, the friend I texted happened to be a journalist but doesnt cover the area that I was working in. But we have embargoes for a reason. Protect your people from socially engineered phishing attacks, Defend against attacks originating from compromised supply chain accounts, Detect fraudulent invoices and payment requests, Prevent people falling victim to targeted impersonation attacks, Defend against the delivery of ransomware and malware by email, Stop phishing attacks that lead to credential theft, Prevent email data loss caused by human error, Block exfiltration of personal and company data, Preserve ethical walls to prevent disclosure of information and avoid conflicts of interest, Apply the appropriate level of encryption to sensitive emails and attachments, Detect and prevent advanced email threats that slip through Microsoft 365, Provide people with easy, actionable advice in real-time at the point of risk, How to use a hacker's toolkit against them. While I agree that this needs to be explained in the right way. I would have serious questions about your judgment if I found out you told any reporter about something that was confidential. Maybe consider a career in advertising, where its your job to tell people about exciting things. You broke a rule and you have to take responsibility. How to handle a hobby that makes income in US. The type of violation you are talking about normally only applies to confidential (shall close) records and not non-public (may close) records. Those questioners would hammer her on this. If her friend never told anyone it never would have gotten out. As a fellow human being, I absolutely get the impulse to tell someone about something! OP, there is another thing to keep in mind. Id say forgive that coworker NOWyou put her in a terrible position by being a big blabbering blabbermouth. Its your actions that are right, wrong, or in that confusing gray area, and what you feel doesnt have to dictate what you do. 1. Im not going to spell out what it was, but it was completely unethical and immoral, and shes lucky her license wasnt permanently revoked for it. Right? This type of thing could have easily happened to your journalism friend in the office. (IE: if they think you f*cked up, then respond like you did, however you actually feel). How to not get fired from work for what you post or send online: Make sure your Facebook and social media accounts are locked down. Once you told your coworker, you dragged her out there on the plank with you. NEVER by email unless explicitly given the go-ahead). But the judge's response to the request for a. Maybe thats the case in your field, but usually confidential doesnt mean that. Even though shes made the same mistake 2 times). Its so very context and field dependent. The amount that LW trusted that friend is a small fraction of how much the government trusted LW. Its no more blind-siding because the coworker reported the issue, than it would be if, say, IT had reported it after monitoring OPs traffic. I strongly disagree with this. The above divulged details to a journalist about allocation and resources they should not know about. You want to minimize this, and thats natural. I see a lot of people saying that its always wrong to share confidential information with the press, and thats not necessarily true. Yeah, thats a good point. I found out accidentally.) Companies (and governments) want to carefully manage the messaging and strategy around information that is released in order to bring the biggest buzz and the best information to the public. Preventing email data loss in Microsoft 365. The z department is not allocating the staff they promised. This seems unnecessarily condescending, and I dont think the LW sounds defensive here at all. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. Before someone decides to do that, I encourage them to get legal representation. It being Silicon Valley, not only was the phone found, it was immediately identified for what it was. I think this really depends. OP can come up with steps to fix the real problem in their future jobs, but they cant really fix an evil coworker. The first person needs to understand that most of the time, you arent entitled to negotiate a yes, because the answer is no. I love telling people things! That being said, I think you can overcome this. This will suck for a long time writing this post has made me feel anxious thinking about my own lapses and consequences from years ago but it all works out in the end. 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. This technique requires extra steps, but it . (For your job search, this might be obvious, but steer clear of medical, legal, PR, or any other field that deals with privacy.). Yeah, we dont want to go down the road if encouraging the OP to continue acting unethically that will ensure she stays unemployed. All three have kept their mouths shut, at least to the best of my knowledge, and I can talk it over without worrying that I will cause a problem with my disclosing. However, I will agree that, per OPs statement, the information appears to be unsolicited and doesnt seem like it would have been considered a records request (who knows, we dont have a lot of information and what we have has been proven to be distorted). I was wondering the same thing. Im not trying to teach her a lesson, necessarily, she seems to have gotten the point. Contact the recipient Get in touch with the recipient as soon as you notice the mistake and ask them to delete the email without reading or sharing it. And calling this victimless isnt a helpful framing; if you do something thats clearly forbidden and could result in real harm, thats a problem even if no harm resulted this time. If that is so, there is nothing you can do to avoid the termination and you should be looking for new employment. If it was the 2nd option then, yeah, they were going to let you go. Your contract can still be terminated if you violate a lawful . 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). LW I encourage you to ask yourself why you wrote this: Your actions showed you were not trustworthy with confidential information. And especially, sharing information that youre not supposed to tends to be the type of thing that will get you fired immediately without another chance. PRSA is an excellent suggestion! Agreed. My only other advice is to consider if there were any conversations on slack that were inappropriate.
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