All we know is that OP made a disclosure, and the coworker is aware the disclosure happened via Slack. Yeah, I thought it was from her personal cell too. But when the guilt is deserved, its got a purpose. 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. Until the boys parents threw the uncle out. It helps you to catch context-driven mistakes such as adding the wrong recipient, attaching the wrong file, or forgetting to use Bcc instead of cc. Yep, I think its worth LW remembering that while she knew shed never leak anything again, her boss and co-workers dont. 4. Upon further investigation, the supervisor discovers that the employee has asked other employees to also send Company documents to her personal e-mail address. Handling confidential information discreetly is a day to day part of working in communications, particularly for government entities (I say as someone in this field). While irritating, email from mass marketing lists dont require a response and you probably wouldnt get an answer anyway. For context I work with PHI covered under HIPAA for my job. The amount that LW trusted that friend is a small fraction of how much the government trusted LW. I dont mean to sound harsh but you really need to break out of this frame of mind. as a manager, should I not wear a childless shirt in my off-hours? Frequently there would be confidential news like, The tiger had her baby and its a girl! or Were getting hippos! that we couldnt share with the public for a few days (to be sure the baby was healthy and would survive past a critical period, or so the news could be shared in the way the marketing department deemed appropriate, or whatever.) 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! She IS a rat! This violates workplace compliance and trust. At the time, I thought it would be ok since it wouldnt cause a problem, but I realize it was not up to me to make that judgement. If it does, you can explain calmly that in a moment of weakness, you broke a serious rule regarding sending information to someone outside the company, but youve learned a hard lesson you never intend to repeat. Right. To say my friend was mortified would be an understatement. Im a journalist, so, yes. Sure, thered be a record in Slack of prior messages. No 2nd chance especially because you knew it was a no-no before you shared. As a former journalist, I can assure you journalists dont leak information, unless its something confidential about their own employers. We dont even know where the LW is; Alison has gotten letters from outside of the United States before. Ive been in the position of having the relevant information, and even if its hard, you just cant tell your journalist friends unless youre okay with them using it: its what they do, and its not fair to ask them not to. They fell prey to the Its just a quick peek and it wont hurt anybody fallacy. 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). 2.) I think its very strange that so many commenters are trying to police the LWs feelings about the coworker. I have information that I have kept confidential for more than a decade that I know the patients wife does not even know (think undisclosed criminal record). Sometimes that PHI belongs to people I know. I am in this place when I read OPs response. 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? LW best of luck! If asked specifially try to describe in detail what happened and what you learned from it, for example: ask if the new employer has clear guidelines on data handling. Plus, I think part of it was that it was exciting BECAUSE it was secret, and now its apparently common knowledge. and that person did what they were told to do and reported it. OP can come up with steps to fix the real problem in their future jobs, but they cant really fix an evil coworker. And in the future if you really cant hold something in (that is not full on illegal to discuss) and want to share it with your spouse or something, dear God dont ever do it in writing! The joker on the other hand was running off at the mouth. Im sure they thought she was a fruit cake. In the US, sexual harassment wont merit a police response. On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. It pretty much doesnt matter what field you are in the higher up you go the more likely you are to be privy to information that you MUST NOT share no matter how excited you may be. I empathize, having both been in government service where the people can let the boundaries get too loose and, separately, had a career-breaking moment in a toxic workplace. For what its worth, one thing I noticed from your letter is language that sounds very social, discussing your trust in your friend, being ratted out by your mentor, not being given a second chance, and so on. Later the coworker left the company and at company B was asked to write a similar report for the new company. I guarantee you that somewhere in the company handbook for the Government Agency where you worked there is a paragraph about the obligations of an employee who learns of a data breach. Because a) LW broke confidentiality. Conversely, I cant tell him about certain things from my work, though at least he knows what I do. The thing is, its a big deal that you were given confidential information and then texted it to a friend. Please keep reflecting on this. ); Im also thinking of someone I know whose work depends on his being able to drive who got a DUI last year, and someone who essentially had a full emotional breakdown in a workplace I was in when I was a lot younger, who ended up under her desk sobbing and throwing things). Im not sure you can conclude that it was publically disclosable. The part I think is dangerous is calling the coworker a rat and saying that disclosing to friend was not a mistake. Sometimes I see stuff that is cool to nerds of that particular field, but 95% of my Secret Information from clients is not even interesting to them. There wasnt any risk, my judgment was good!. Instead, you gossiped about it and risked an announcement before things were ready. Thats also real life. Your contract can still be terminated if you violate a lawful . It was a refreshingly candid answer and so we wound up hiring him. An in-person meeting might be more appropriate if you accidentally sent information about your plans to find another job to your manager. The latter looks more like something that could repeat under similar circumstances. I recently saw a movie in pre-screening thats being pushed to be a blockbuster. Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. But OPs situation sounds like more of a case of I am just soooo excited about Cool Thing that I had to tell rather than something dangerous or corrupt is going on and the public should know.. In "Labs," scroll down to "Undo Send" and enable it. Here are the things that OP needs to remember: First, the coworker is not a rat, even if she misunderstood the scope of OPs unauthorized disclosure and mistakenly misrepresented it. If you feel uncomfortable about a work rule you are clearly violating, your coworkers are not going to be thrilled that you get them out there on the plank with you. Then both OP and Coworker could be out of a job. NEVER by email unless explicitly given the go-ahead). We just had something similar happen at my office last week. So far that has not happened. 3. And then they did it again. The letter makes it look like you only told one person out of turn, but actually you told two people. If someone told me something that I know Id have to report, I would report it. 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.. "It is likely not private if the employee used the employer . Like its going to be easier to find a job because she has the integrity to say she got fired. She would have learned a valuable lesson and still kept her job. Its a big difference if you sit together at a bar, your friend mentions chocolate teapots and you say oh, this morning I was asked to design a llama-themed one before you realize that you really shouldnt have said that. I was under the impression that most big companies had a policy against telling a reference checker anything beyond dates of employment. Moving forward, the best way to handle it is be honest. Maintaining confidentiality is a foundational occupational requirement in a lot of fields. Third, with bright line rules, we cannot adopt situational ethics where its ok to disclose to close-trusted-journalist-friend because we trust them. Now I just leave and cry and deal with the long-term consequences, like never moving up. A non-disclosure agreement (often referred to as a confidentiality agreement), is a legally-binding contract which governs the sharing of information between people or organizations and sets limits on the use of the information. Yes and thats the consequence they now have to live with. In fact, if I ever got a query from someone I knew, I was required to hand off the query to a colleague. Perhaps the email was intended for a client in which case the clients data is at risk and the sender has inadvertently committed a data leak. Hopefully there still something to be said for that! For me, it was like OK, she shared embargoed information something she shouldnt have. The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. This. how else could you have met that need?) I dont think it was over company lines. 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. I would not immediately snap into how can I report this? He had a fairly high security clearance and was stationed at NORAD for a time. I understand your irritation with your former coworker. So I guess maybe it is a generational thing? In no time you will have your next job lined up and all this will be just a post earning you rep. Got my first job. Theres an element of common sense to be used. Confidentiality is not just an issue in communications. To be fair Jules, I was making the assumption that it had been, in effect, sexual assault, which may not have been the case. Before I hired you, Id want to know you were familiar with and in agreement with our ethical code, which talks a lot about protecting our clients. One day its pre-public FOUO information; what next? TootsNYC is talking about this latter case. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. I actually think your big mistake was telling your coworker, not telling a trusted friend. Well its possible your coworker just had it out for you, but it sounds more likely that she genuinely misunderstood or that she understood perfectly but thought leaking info to a journalist friend was serious enough to report and then it was your boss who misunderstood the details. I dont find it understandable that the OP expected a second chance for this, as someone who routinely deals with unclassified-but-FOUO, Confidential, and Secret information, except insofar as I can have sympathy for someone who perhaps didnt understand the gravity of their actions until consequences came down. 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. 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. No, no, no, no, no. Unfortunately accepting responsibility doesnt always work in some workplaces, it just digs your hole. Show prospective employers that you can reflect on your actions and learn from mistakes, because thats not at all what Im seeing here. In most reporting policies i am aware of it would be considered tipping off and get the person reporting in trouble. Interpretations, justifications, conceptualizations can also be wrong, surely. Oh no! Find somewhere else to tell it in order to release the steam valve. But you should try to understand how this happened (why that friend? I know there are cases where someone might fear retaliation etc, but with a higher up getting a subordinate into (deserved sorry OP!) Mostly, Im saying this to you so that you understand that you should never have trusted that co-worker to keep that kind of information to herself, no matter how much of a mentor shed been to you I do think that she should have told you that this was serious enough that she couldnt not report it. Not necessarily for the leaking but for the way youre talking about it. BUT, that shouldnt excuse leaking things, and theres a big difference between a spouse or a journalist, though I can understand why it can still be difficult. Thats a big deal. 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.