The most unforgettable experience in my army days
During my national service, I was appointed as an acting assistant chief clerk in the manpower branch whose role was to assist my chief clerk in overseeing the administrative work.
A month before the annual human resource audit, my admin support assistants and I would stay late to check the leave record cards, interview booklets and update personal particulars for all the servicemen in our battalion. As the serviceman’s latest leave record card and personal particulars were to be printed from the army intranet and I had limited rights (i.e. to apply leave for myself only), my chief clerk simply granted me the additional access rights for his convenience which were not supposed to. During that month, my chief clerk also recommended me for rank promotion in view of my excellent performance where my commanding officer (CO) had to approve.
The problem arose during the audit check when one of the external auditors found that I had additional access rights which I was not supposed to. This affected our audit result as the auditors deemed this as a serious matter. My CO knew about it and questioned me. As my working relationship with my chief clerk was good, I did not want to get him involved as it would affect his performance bonus due to his negligence. So, I admitted my fault.
Few weeks later, I was told that my CO rejected my promotion. He also did not talk to me unlike in the past he would.
What should I do?
(250 words)
Hi Kent,
ReplyDeleteWorking in the army can indeed be a difficult affair (and perhaps that is an understatement in itself). As in many other large organizations, there can be a multitude of red-tapes that need to be overcome before duties can be performed and tasks completed.
In this case, your chief clerk has chosen to circumvent such bureaucratic barriers by breaking the rules. It might be a hassle to print leave record cards and personal particulars. They can be a mild annoyance since these documents are usually handled by conscriptees. However, with the provision of additional access rights, it brings into question ethical and security issues, that if left unchecked, might become precedence to future security breaches.
Without knowledge that your chief clerk accorded you these extra rights, coupled with the above-mentioned likely frame of mind, your CO responded in a manner that he saw fit.
This is indeed a series of unfortunate events.
Perhaps what one could do in such a situation is to meet the chief clerk directly and explain the situation without explicitly or implicitly laying the responsibility of the outcome on him. You could explain to him that the CO has rejected your promotion and that you noticed that he hasn't been very welcoming and warm lately. You could then enquire his opinion on why this might be so. You could then direct the conversation to the audit check that was conducted, and point out that this might be the reason for the cold shoulder. After which, you could ask him for his advice on how best to rectify the situation. If your chief clerk is a man of reason, he would gladly help you.
The above is one way of going about the situation, albeit risky.
Perhaps a less risky alternative would be to seek out a third party to mediate the situation while still following the chain of command. As such, this could perhaps be your Admin Officer. Redress could be seeked by explaining to him the situation in detail. Given his hierarchical position, your Admin Officer could perhaps be in better standing to alleviate the situation without causing too much mistrust between the parties involved.
In the future, if such a similar organizational need should arise as to require the leave record cards and personal particulars of servicemen to be checked, the security protocol could still be adhered to by first listing out servicemen of whose documents are needed. The list could be then be passed to the chief clerk who can print directly from his account. This is admittedly a hassle but the annoyance could perhaps be mitigated by gently mentioning that one is afraid of an audit check and the administrative implications of it.
Hi Kent,
ReplyDeleteIt was rather unfortunate that your promotion was rejected due to this incident. I agree with Halim that you could speak to your chief clerk on this matter and seek his advice as it was the negligence of your chief clerk for not removing your additional access rights in time. If your chief clerk was a very reasonable person, he would definitely help you. Even though, he might not claim responsibility for his negligence, I believe he would have other ways to compensate you like giving you extra days off. As for your CO, I believe he would understand that your previous contribution would have much compensate for the small lapse you have made. Ultimately, there would be other opportunities for you to impress him again and he would talk to you again in no time.
With regards,
Kar Liang
Hello Kent,
ReplyDeleteI believe the infamous saying which every army personnel are familiar with is ‘Do anything, but don’t get caught’. Often we taken it upon ourselves to defy orders, albeit unethical, but do so in the name of the greater good. Sometimes rules and regulations may hinder the efficiency of progress, and only experience will tell you to obey otherwise. I am certainly not a stickler for rules, as it is most important that we remember and understand the motive of which the rules were implemented for.
After reading your incident, I feel that you had given your decision plenty of thought and decided upon the most efficient solution. While this involved sacrifice on your part, you had treasured your relationship with your chief clerk and believed that preparation for the annual human resource audit would only be complete with the additional rights given to you. While your CO did not see eye to eye with you regarding this situation, I believe he would have been open to logical reasoning. Hence, I would first explain my predicament to the chief clerk and request that it be made known to the CO that I was given additional privileges to sort out the serviceman’s latest leave record card and personal particulars. If the chief clerk agrees to it, I would find an appropriate time after the entire audit was complete before I shared with the CO the truth of the matter. I would apologize for my unprofessional behavior and accept any punishment delivered, but raise the point that I had only done so for the sake the audit and the unit’s reputation. This should convince the CO that it was not my primary desire to gain such privileges during the preparation.
However, in the case that the chief clerk disagrees with my suggestion, I would look to the other admin support assistants to back me up should I decide to explain my situation to the CO after the audit is over. While I am ultimately relying on the CO’s flexibility and empathy, I am certain he would accept my reason for my unethical behavior in the end.
@Halim: Thanks for your solution, but the fact is that my chief clerk finds it troublesome to print the leave record cards and personal particulars for all the servicemen in the battalion. Perhaps I should have reminded him the day before the audit to remove my admin rights and this will solve the problem.
ReplyDelete@Kar Liang: Sadly to say that was the last audit before I ORD. Anyway, I managed to get promoted one month before my ORD with the help of my manpower officer. Thankfully, she acknowledged my contribution to the branch.
@Eric: I agreed with you that I treasured my working relationship with my chief clerk that I took this move. Thanks for the sound solution.
Hi Kent,
ReplyDeleteThis is certainly an interesting conflict that you have presented here. It does appear this conflict has no easy solution in sight, and is further complicated by the strict rules and regulations that all army personnel are forced to adhere to. But I found it puzzling that since you had admitted to having been guilty in accessing the system, wouldn’t the external auditors not have traced who had granted you these privileged rights? I think something as major as changing the access rights of anyone in the unit would leave a digital trace on the unit’s computers. If that was the case, then the dynamics of the situation would have been quite different.
Since I think most of us had worked on the assumption that your commanding officer (CO), had no idea of his chief clerk’s involvement, and posted plausible solutions to the conflict, I would like to tackle the issue from another angle. Assuming that your CO had reason to suspect your chief clerk’s role in the incident from the investigation, he could have initially simply wanted to hear your own version of the situation. He could have not taken kindly to your admittance of guilt, and started to doubt your trustworthiness.
Given that this is not likely to be a serious breach of confidentiality, since the information you had been given access to was not highly confidential, the CO could have simply let the issue lie. Indeed, if it was of a serious nature, not receiving a promotion would have seemed trivial compared to a formal military charge against you. I may venture to suggest that he could have rejected your promotion because he was weary of promoting a person he cannot completely trust to a position which can potentially have exposure to confidential documents.
The solution pertaining to this problem would then simply be to approach your CO and explain that you had wanted to avoid straining your relationship with the chief clerk. Sincerity and complete honesty in your explanation at this point should help in clearing the misunderstanding, and restore the good relations the both of you had.
This is my alternative take on the conflict, and hopefully can go some way to helping you understand the source of the conflict better.
Best regards,
Ho Zong
Oh dear.
ReplyDeleteKent, I am sorry to hear that it is a real situation and that the outcome wasn't good. However, thankfully, you did get promoted.
Well, like Ho Zong, I am a little puzzled that the army could't find out that someone had given you access. Did they think you hack into the system?
When you get into teaching, there are also rules. Sometimes, you think you are helping the students but the principal may feel you have broken a rule.
Regards,
Happy
Hi Ho Zong & Ms Happy Goh,
ReplyDeleteIt was a long and complicated story. As my appointment was a NSF documentation in-charge, I am have the basic administration rights to give the very basic right to the servicemen in the battalion, such as 'Apply Leave' only. So in the case of the HR audit, I approached my chief clerk what were the rights I supposed to have. Then, he just asked me to check the boxes of the rights, thus I have all the rights. So, during the audit, the external auditor asked me to login to my account to show her, and from there she could see the rights I had. It was then reported during the debrief that I was not supposed to have certain rights. Hope this elaboration would give you all a better picture.
@Ms Happy Goh: I agree with you. However, I feel that it should be fine to exercise flexibility at times though the rules have been set for a better cause so long as the course of action is well-justified. In this case, as teachers, we are helping our students for a good cause.