You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

No Profession Is Immune to Confidentiality Defaults

Loose-lips behavior can cause all kinds of dire consequences. A few examples of different professions: A Minneapolis search firm partner named Roger told me of how his firm lost a major client due to a conversation overheard in an airport terminal flight club lounge in Chicago. Apparently, two of Roger’s account executives were openly discussing the merits of two candidates they had just interviewed. They used first names and went into “great detail about the candidates’ backgrounds and professional and personal merits.” Another client of Roger’s search firm was within earshot of the entire conversation—along with several others in the lounge—and “began to feel uncomfortable about these two talking so freely in a public arena and, consequently, started wondering if they were associated with the search firm he worked with.” He purposely struck up a side conversation with one of the women and asked what firm she was with—and bingo! It was the search firm he was currently using to hire a new CFO. Roger told me this client immediately went to a private cubicle in the flight club and called him to terminate his search contract and all future business with his firm, and there was nothing Roger could do to persuade the client otherwise. He lost a major account, and the loose-lips players lost their jobs.

Then there was the time I was presenting at office product manufacturer Boise Cascade when an attorney in the class shared how he handled ...