A Blown Deadline Taught Me the Value of Accountability

In this series, professionals reflect on their inevitable career mistakes. Follow the stories here and write your own (please include #BestMistake in your post).

I'm a recovering securities lawyer. As you can see on my LinkedIn profile, I practiced for eight years at two distinguished firms: Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, and Dechert LLP. Those were important years, ones in which my career developed through successes — and the occasional mistake.

One of those mistakes taught me an important lesson: the value of taking responsibility and not ducking blame. I've carried this lesson with me throughout my career and as the leader of a public policy membership organization today.

The Mess-Up

Being an associate at a big law firm was tough work back in the '90s, and I don't think it has changed much since: late nights and weekends at the office, the stresses of client management, the grind of hitting billable hours targets, and the frustration of getting little to no credit for your toil. (Of course, there were perks too!)

At Fried Frank, I worked in the corporate department, which handled important matters for high-profile clients — matters such as helping companies to structure deals, to issue securities, and to engage with the Securities and Exchange Commission or other financial regulators.

For one matter I was working on, we needed to make an important filing on behalf of our client. Now, as I'm sure most readers know, getting paperwork in on time is a pretty big deal in the law. Missing a deadline can be costly, even disastrous, in a legal matter. At law firms of all sizes, botched filings are not taken lightly.

In this instance, I had handed off the task of making the filing to a junior paralegal. Doing that seemed to me like a good idea (given that associates were strongly urged to limit their time on tasks that couldn't be billed to a client), but the situation went wrong. The paralegal failed to make it to the courthouse that day. I can still recall the flush of anger and dread when I found out what had happened. A few f-bombs may have been dropped.

How I Responded

Of course, there was a tempting way out for me in this situation. I could have just pointed the finger at the paralegal.

But that's not what I did. It seemed wrong to chuck the poor guy under the bus; after all, I was the one who delegated the assignment to him. So I decided to shoulder responsibility for the error. I went to the office of the partner-in-charge and explained that I had missed the filing.

In this case, I lucked out. Because of how other parties in the matter had handled the same filing, there was no disaster. Better still, the partner-in-charge later pulled me aside and said he appreciated how I had handled the situation.

Lesson Learned

This episode may not have been a major one in my life, but its lesson has stayed with me nonetheless. At the Center for Audit Quality, I know that I'm not perfect and neither is my staff (although they're pretty darn close). When I make a mistake, I own up to it. And when someone who works for me takes responsibility for a mistake, I try to treat it like the partner-in-charge that I once worked for — with appreciation for their willingness to stand up and be held accountable.

A securities lawyer, Cindy Fornelli has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Audit Quality since its establishment in 2007.

Photo: "Clock," via deux-chi on Flickr