In PAs We Trust

As part of everyday duties, many PAs control Outlook calendars or monitor emails for the people we support. Because of this, it’s very possible that we may encounter information, confidential or otherwise, that was not meant for our eyes. How we deal with this knowledge affects the very fabric of the office.

Say, for example, you come across an email that mentions your department as one that could possibly be selected for job cuts. Obviously this is high-level confidential information that wasn’t meant to be seen by someone at the administrative level. Despite your own personal fears and temptations, it would still be incredibly reckless to divulge this information to other people in the group. The responsible thing to do would be to meet with your manager (or whoever the email was intended for), let him or her know what you’ve seen unintentionally, and discuss the situation. This honesty and openness serves two purposes. It covers yourself should this information leak out in some other way, and it instils a measure of trust in you with your manager that can be great benefit down the road.

Trust is something that can be very hard to establish, but can be broken in seconds. As PAs, we want the people we support to trust us to get the job done, and often trust us with information we are given. Through many years of working with my manager, he’s built up a high level of trust and confidence in me. He trusts me enough to handle his calendar and email, and act on his behalf for certain tasks. He has no problem discussing staff and departmental issues: because he knows that what he tells me will not leave the room. In many cases the knowledge I’ve received has helped me work better with the other people I support.

Levels of trust and of keeping information secret also have their limits. As I mentioned previously, PAs are exposed to a myriad of information, and we have the responsibility to deal with this data in a responsible manner. Being responsible can also mean being ethical. What would you do if you found that your boss wanted you to expense a personal purchase as work related? Would you not think twice and do it if it were only a small amount? What if next time it was five hundred, or several thousand? Do we look past the transgressions of others and do what we are told despite the fact they could be against company policy or even be illegal? Unfortunately there is no ethical guidebook to consult – only your own conscience.