The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tough choice was also smart choice
Reporting a friend felt lousy but likely prevented problems.
Q: Over the holidays, my friend and co-worker confessed to me about some work he had cut corners on, in a way that is a big problem in our fifield. I told him he had to go to his boss and come clean before the reports went out to our client. My friend seemed shocked. I guess he was hoping I would help him fifigure another way out or say “everybody does that” or something.
When we were back at work, I asked how the talk with his boss had gone. He admitted he was just going to sweep it under the rug and reminded me that he had told me that in confifidence. I told him if he didn’t tell his boss, I would have to. He said he would deny everything, and it would only make a mess for both of us.
In the end, I had no choice but to report his behavior to his boss, not only to protect our client and our company but because I can’t “unknow” this. If I were ever asked, I would have to confess that I knew.
I know I did what I had to do, but I betrayed a confifidence and wrecked a long-term friendship and possibly hurt my friend’s career. I have felt rotten and super-anxious ever since. Where do I go from here?
A: It feels exonerating to say, “I had no choice but to report him,” but that’s not exactly true. You could have chosen to pretend you never heard your friend’s admission, or help him cover it up further. Presumably, you would have preferred a solution that kept you both out of trouble and prevented harm to clients or your company — but unless you have a time machine, that choice just didn’t exist. So you went with the option that would do the least harm to the fewest parties.
That choice is so reasonable, it feels like a no-brainer. But it was still a choice. My guess is, you feel rotten and anxious because you would rather have made a choice that wouldn’t upset your friend. You might even be feeling like a rule-following goody-two-shoes who finked on a friend to The Man. In books and movies, that character is almost never the one we’re rooting for, even when we know they’re doing the morally and legally correct thing.
Would it help if I told you that in this case, the right thing to do was also the smart thing to do?
This wasn’t a “secret crush on a co-worker” type of confidence that causes more personal mortification than actual harm. This sounds more like an “undermining trust in our industry” secret — the kind that leads to lawsuits, firings, government intervention and ethics-training requirements for decades to come. You correctly realized that forgiving or minimizing your friend’s transgression was way out of your pay grade.
Your friend also had choices, going all the way back to cutting those corners. At every turn, he pushed the choice away from himself, like a cartoon bomb with a lit fuse. He could have snuffed the fuse any time by correcting his work or telling his boss, but he didn’t. He chose to push it on you. You told him how to defuse it and gave him multiple opportunities to do so, but he was content to risk letting it blow up in both your faces.
Rather than accept that risk, you handed it off to the bomb squad. It wasn’t an easy or nice choice — just a smart one.
Maybe there were other ways you could have gently nudged your friend in a difffffffffffferent direction: “Sure, everybody struggles with doing things the easy way versus doing them the way we know we’re supposed to. I know you know the right thing to do. I can even help you do it if you need support.” But that still would have left you both with the same choices to make, and you are not responsible for making the right choice more palatable to him.
There’s a difffffffffffference between feeling lousy about making a bad choice and feeling lousy over a painful choice. It feels lousy because you were in a lousy position with nothing but lousy options. That doesn’t mean you should have chosen otherwise.
And while you’re feeling guilt over breaking a friend’s confifidence, let’s recall your friend’s part in all this. Making a bad decision and wanting to keep it quiet — that’s just being human. Threatening to “make a mess for both of (you)” if you act to protect yourself? That’s a choice. And it’s neither a smart one nor one a friend would make.
Your anxiety is telling you to take steps to protect yourself until you know your friend’s next move. Document what has happened, and read up on your employer’s anti-retaliation policies. If he owns his mistakes and apologizes, you can be friends again. Until then, be smart.