Thread topicallity, accuracy and integrity....

[Brad Jones]

* Say "The Heck with it"
* Inform BOTH the original novice and the person who jumped in of the ramifications of the information

If the second novice employee works for someone else, then it might be out of line to correct them.

In my opinion, the person receiving the information is going to have to make a bit of a judgment call on whose information that want to accept and use. They are to take it as advice and not necessarily as absolute truths.

One of the points your argument leaves out is... what if the senior person is wrong and the other novice person actually -is- correct? All of the sudden, where the Sr. person thought they were doing a good deed results in obfuscating the entire issue and making a situation even worse.....

[TheCPUWizard]

If the second novice employee works for someone else, then it might be out of line to correct them.

That is true, but "in the real world" I would then go to their boss, or a peer person in that chain of command or a common supervisor. I believe that when a company hires someone they deserve the best, and this includes pointing out even "potential" bad information (see important info at end of post!!)

In my opinion, the person receiving the information is going to have to make a bit of a judgment call on whose information that want to accept and use. They are to take it as advice and not necessarily as absolute truths.

This gets back to the matter of "trust". Obviously no one can control what information a person accepts or rejects.

One of the points your argument leaves out is... what if the senior person is wrong and the other novice person actually -is- correct? All of the sudden, where the Sr. person thought they were doing a good deed results in obfuscating the entire issue and making a situation even worse.....

I am very open with clients and teams that I work with. I tell them up front that I have probably made more mistakes than any (small) group of them. These days, most of them are caught before someone else is even aware of the mistake. The ones that do "leak" into the wild, are typically incredibly stupid, embarassing or both. [Imagine standing on the desk of a naval vessel having just watched the crew in near-panic after the main gun just rotated violently and slammed into the desk (Dutch M-Frigate 1992) and going "Oops....me bad"]