When Unsure Ask: A Young Man's First Encounters With Confidential Information

By: Everardo Alanis Fuentes

I still remember it clearly it was the first week with the Building commission, I had gone through induction and countless of hours of form filling and other HR things (when I say countless I mean like 2 hours... they seemed to drag on out for 6… forms… ugh) but no one really explained what was confidential and what wasn’t confidential, not that I needed an explanation due to all the units where we had touched upon that topic at Curtin. But boy oh boy should I have asked for what was confidential and what wasn’t.

So as I had mention before it was my first week at the internship and I was eager to learn and to work. My boss kept giving me work which I appreciated enjoyed. Having my mind in the assessment for this unit though as I finished and got some worked approved I sent it to my own email assuming there wouldn’t be any problem with that as I had wrote it and it wasn’t anything very important. The days passed and more work accumulated on my email ready for me to put into my report, until one day talking to my boss after completing a work she had asked me to I asked her if I should just send it to my email so I could put it into my report… her answer was no…

As it turns out just because I wrote it dosen’t mean I can send it straight to myself for my assessment… of course I didn't tell her I had as I did not wish to get in trouble and promptly deleted everything I sent. The proper way for me to get my information was to go through the whole process of sending it to legal getting it watermarked and so on… the things you learn.

This was a very important experience for me and I hope that everyone who reads this blog post takes some knowledge with them, always ask. You don’t get into trouble for asking, you get into trouble for doing. This time I was lucky I didn’t get into trouble and i'm glad I learnt and realized this early on. I hope this helps you even if it's a little.