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Tree rings, "documentary" evidence of past environmental conditions. Hard evidence of what you're reporting can mitigate the risks of reporting workplace malpractice.
Workplace malpractice is any behavior related to job performance that deviates from standards, procedures, or reasonable expectations of the employer. For example, it would be workplace malpractice for a market researcher to intentionally include fabricated data in a report assessing the positions of potential competitors. I've explored workplace malpractice in previous issues — see "Counterproductive Knowledge Work Behavior," Point Lookout for September 21, 2016, for examples.
Several readers have expressed interest in the risks of reporting workplace malpractice. They ask, "If I've witnessed an incident or a pattern of workplace malpractice, what should I do?" There's no general answer. But if you're considering making a report, be alert to the risks. Below are some of those risks.
- Failure-to-report risk
- If you choose not to report what you know, you could be in trouble if people in authority learn that you knew what was happening and didn't report it. If one or more of the risks below seem substantial, and you feel unsafe making a report, consider reporting instead that you have information, but you don't feel safe reporting it. That might afford some protection against failure-to-report charges, and it might motivate your employer to address the safety issue.
- Confidentiality issues in the reporting process
- Most misconduct At work, there is no
such thing as a witness
protection programreport management processes do promise confidentiality to those who report misconduct. The best programs offer an anonymous tip line. If your employer doesn't provide an anonymous tip line, confidentiality can sometimes be breached. Be prepared for possible retaliation. In most workplaces, there is no witness protection program. - Misinterpretation
- Are you certain that you're interpreting correctly whatever you've witnessed? Are alternative interpretations plausible? If alternatives are plausible, your report might be inaccurate, and potentially damaging to you. If the alternatives are plausible, they can also provide you with valid explanations for failing to report what you witnessed: "Yes, I knew about that, but it seemed OK to me because I thought it was X."
- Misidentifying the real perpetrator
- The perpetrator of the malpractice might have been acting under instructions of a superior. If so, your report could affect that superior, who might be powerful enough to mitigate the effects of your report, and vengeful enough to seek retaliation.
- Invalid evidence
- Did you actually witness the incident? Or are you inferring malpractice based on contextual evidence? If the latter, might someone inquire about your failure to report that earlier contextual evidence? If not, report the incident anyway if you feel safe enough. If you have any doubts about your safety, see the comment above about failure-to-report risk.
- Witness testing
- At times, an incident you witnessed might have been conducted in your view solely to determine whether you could be trusted not to report it. The probability of this scenario is elevated if the "test infraction" is minor, or if you were asked in advance to be present, and asked afterwards to be silent. If you suspect "witness testing," you're working amongst sophisticated operators. How long you will remain safe, even if you cooperate, is difficult to predict.
At whatever level you estimate the risks of reporting malpractice, those risks are mitigated to some extent by hard evidence. Documents, recordings, photos, your journals, or records of any kind — anything you have that can corroborate your report. Collecting this kind of evidence might bear risks of its own, so take care. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
I Think, Therefore I Laugh
- Humor is fun — that's why they call it "funny." If you add humor to your own work environment,
you'll reduce your level of stress, increase your creativity, and drive your enemies nuts.
Organizational Firefighting
- Sometimes companies or projects get into trouble, and "fires" erupt one after another. When
this happens, we say we're in "firefighting" mode. But it's more than a metaphor — we
have a lot to learn from wildland firefighters.
Tangled Thread Troubles
- Even when we use a facilitator to manage a discussion, managing a queue for contributors can sometimes
lead to problems. Here's a little catalog of those difficulties.
Disjoint Awareness: Systematics
- Organizations use some policies and processes that can cause people in collaborations to have inaccurate
understandings of what each other is doing. Performance management, politics, and resource allocation
processes can all contribute to disjoint awareness.
On Schedule Conflicts
- Schedule conflicts happen from time to time, even when the organization is healthy and all is well.
But when schedule conflicts are common, they might indicate that the organization is trying to do too
much with too few people.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 26: Devious Political Tactics: Bad Decisions
- When workplace politics influences the exchanges that lead to important organizational decisions, we sometimes make decisions for reasons other than the best interests of the organization. Recognizing these tactics can limit the risk of bad decisions. Available here and by RSS on February 26.
And on March 5: On Begging the Question
- Some of our most expensive wrong decisions have come about because we've tricked ourselves as we debated our options. The tricks sometimes arise from rhetorical fallacies that tangle our thinking. One of the trickiest is called Begging the Question. Available here and by RSS on March 5.
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