You have made a mistake that affects the whole team.
Take this situation apart. Each piece goes in one box: yours, or not yours. There is no third box, and almost nothing falls in one piece.
Yours
- Whether you report it yourself before somebody finds it.The difference between a mistake and a cover-up is one act of five minutes. Almost all the damage in situations like this comes after the error, not from it.
- Whether you explain what happened or explain why it was not your fault.The first repairs, the second damages. On paper they sound the same, and everyone around you tells them apart unfailingly.
- Whether you change one thing so it cannot happen again.Apologies are cheap and changes are expensive. Only the second counts as an answer, and it is entirely up to you.
Not yours
- How much work it costs your colleagues to put it right.That is already fixed by the time you discover it. You can help repair; you cannot undo the size of it.
- Whether your manager holds it against you.His memory and his character. Some people write things off and others keep lists, and that difference existed before you got anything wrong.
- That you feel wretched about it.That feeling belongs to somebody who takes his work seriously and is not evidence of incompetence. It passes on its own; what remains is what you do with it.
The reasoning. Failure at work is the territory where people swap the boxes fastest. The damage is treated as something still open to influence, when it is already fixed, and their own conduct afterwards is treated as inevitable, when that is where all the room is. Swap them back and what remains is a short list you can work through this afternoon.
- If you have strayed from reason, return to it.after Marcus Aurelius
Nearby situations
More on this topic: Work and failure