Q AAM 5 Remember to respond to my post A reader writes: I work in higher ed development/fundraising, and I was hoping to get your thoughts on a situation I encountered last month. We are currently interviewing for a position that involves handling sensitive and confidential information on our alumni and donors, and have been conducting group interviews (4-5 employees in each group) with the candidates. During one of these conversations, the candidate shared with us a document meant to show off his work at his current employer, but it very obviously contained real data about one of their donors, including confidential information concerning their philanthropy. To put it mildly, I was stunned that we were seeing that information, and immediately disqualified the candidate for that reason alone (although the rest of the interview provided others). For whatever reason, I didn’t immediately question the candidate to see if he thought that sharing that sort of information was appropriate. Now, though, I am wondering if we owe it to that candidate’s employer to report that this private information was being shared outside the office. On one hand, it would immediately breach the trust between the job-seeker and my office as we would have to report that they were looking for another job. On the other, I know that we would want to know if the private information of one of our donors was being carelessly shared externally. Do we have an ethical obligation to report it? I have always felt that we do, but I don’t know how willing the higher-ups would be to do so.