As you can tell, I’ve been a little busy lately. 

In between preparing for my next group of speeches  (new speeches based on my upcoming book A Manager’s Guide to Employee Engagement), trying to shake a nasty virus that I have had for a week, and checking 700 reports for one of my biggest clients, things have gotten a little hectic.

Staying up late, waking up early, on the computer more in the last 10 days than I have been for the previous three months has taken its toll on my humor, my health, and my weight… Not the weight loss program I would suggest, but significantly better than 15 years ago when I lost 40 pounds in five days due to the Giardia parasite found at a local fast food restaurant.  That fun caused me to stop eating red meat for almost a decade. 

Anyways….

Something else came up last week.

I found an error in some reporting I had given to a client of mine a while back.  Nothing earth shattering, but a mistake none-the-less. 

I’m working with another client on linking the results of their second Workforce Engagement Assessment to their financials.  It’s a great case for me, as we have P&L (profit and loss) data, productivity data, and turnover stats at a “branch level”, and we have my engagement survey data at that level as well.  You throw all the stats in a big statistical program, and “tappa tappa poof”, out come some correlations linking employee satisfaction to bottom line financial performance.

So I went back to some of the other programs I conducted in the last six months to take a look at the information we collected.  It was during this review that I spotted something in the data that just didn’t “feel right”.  So I began to look, and look, and look.  And look some more.

All the data checked out.  The reports I provided to the clients matched the information from my analysis.  I went back into the original data sets, not being able to shake the feeling that I was missing something.  I took a break, checked some more of the 700 reports, and then tried again with a “fresh eye”.

And then I found it. 

Some data from one question had “flipped”;  simply put, what should have been coded as “X” was coded as “Y”. 

The impact was minimal, the change had no real impact on the results of the workforce engagement assessment my company provided, and the client had never noticed it, and would have never known about it.

So I fixed it, rechecked the entire project, updated the reporting, and called the client.   We spoke for awhile on the implications of the change, and the steps we have taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again… to this company or any other.  At the end of the conversation, my client asked me if I had given any consideration to “not telling her”.  As she said, she would have never found the error, and I could have just as easily moved ahead without mentioning a word. 

I told her that the thought of “not telling” had crossed my mind for a brief moment.  I’m human.  The possibility of losing a client is not something I take lightly.  But as soon as it was in my head, it was on its way out.  My thoughts immediately went to fixing the error, re-doing the reports, and fessing up to the client. 

My business relies on my clients trusting me to give accurate, truthful information.  They don’t always like what I tell them, but they must believe it to be accurate.  They may not agree with my conclusions and recommendations, but they must have confidence in the underlying data. 

We chatted a little while longer, and she ended the conversation thanking me for my “ethics”.  Instead of losing a client, I truly believe the way in which we fixed the error only helped to solidify the good we have.  In business, people see what you are made of during a crises, handling the “good times” is easy.

Both my wife and younger son witnessed how my company handled this issue firsthand in the last week.  My wife said she was “proud of me” in how I handled it, even though it could have meant the loss of an important client. 

That’s the best feedback I could have gotten. 

Is there ever a “Time for Ethics”?  No. 

It’s an all or none proposition.  At least here it is.  And now you know where I stand.