Bad News and the Two-Question Set

A system failed. A human error occurred. A competitor won out. An audit failed. A process broke. Or any of a variety of other unfortunate circumstances. Regardless of the cause, it's now your job to tell someone the bad news!

While you can't prevent that someone from ultimately shooting the messenger, you can make things easier on yourself by having clear, crisp, answers to the following Two-Question Set:

1. How did you solve/meaningfully address this problem?
2. What have you done to insure it never happens again?

If you cannot answer these two simple questions in a confident and articulate manner, don't kid yourself - you have some important work yet to do.

Now, sometimes, it's more important to be timely than thorough - especially when it's new news, as it were. In those cases, it's perfectly reasonable to say something like this:

"This is a conversation where I tell you something's broken; it's not the conversation where I tell you it's fixed."

Know, though, that this in no way absolves you from answering the Two-Question Set in the very near future. To maintain your credibility and regard, you must be able to say precisely how you solved/meaningfully addressed the problem at hand, and what you put in place to prevent it from ever happening again. And, of course, your solutions must be good ones.

But if they are, you'll likely find your reputation in the organization increases notwithstanding the problems that occurred on your watch.