Tell Giselle: Being unfairly attacked requires a diplomatic response

“A coworker went to my supervisor and made false allegations against me, claiming I was not doing my job appropriately. My boss did not believe these charges. When she told me, she explained to me almost embarrassed that she had to, that she was required to tell me.

“She also wanted me to have the chance to clear the issue, and was more curious than anything else how this problem even happened. I went to great lengths with documentation to prove the accuser wrong. It was evident to my boss that the person who was trying to trash my reputation was the one not telling the truth.

“Now that this has been resolved with my boss, I would like to know if there is anything else I should do. Company policy prevents me from being told who made the accusations so I will never know.”

G: You are in a fortunate position in that you came out of this distressing event with your integrity intact. Clearly you have done enough things correctly in the past to have established a good relationship with your boss, so that you went into these discussions with a solid foundation of trust.

Now that your boss is aware that there is a troublemaker of sorts in the midst, your equity has actually risen with your employer.

In the most peculiar ways of how things can sometimes turn out for us, what may seem like an awful personal event can become something quite positive.

Not only has this given you and your boss another experience that reinforces your work ethic and professionalism, this has exposed a weakness that your boss can now deal with. Without you being wrongly accused, it may have taken much longer for your boss to become aware of a serious staffing problem.

Your boss has all the information she needs to write up a report for their personnel file, which may or may not ultimately lead to further action against the employee who wrongfully accused you.

Hopefully this other employee will learn a valuable lesson from all of this and consider speaking directly with a co-worker first, before throwing a smoke bomb. To be generous, for all we know, they may have been operating under incomplete

information about what your duties are, or they may have been misinformed by someone else in the organization.

Regardless of how they came to their decision to essentially throw you under the bus, they likely did not expect to get themselves into so much trouble.

It is up to your boss, not you, to take the next steps. You are in the clear. The best thing you can do is to put this in the rearview mirror and continue your job as though it did not happen. To dwell on who may have been behind this will only distract you from what matters most.

There always remains the possibility that with time, a sense of guilt or remorse may prompt the accuser to come forward and want to talk to you about this situation, or even wish to apologize to you.

If that were to happen, as with any relationship where someone wants to make amends, try to hold a warm heart of forgiveness. Those who actually cause us personal or professional harm may not be fully aware of the consequences of their actions against us at the time, and may evolve to see they made a terrible mistake.

Unless this event is brought up to you by your boss or any other superior, consider its resolution a win for you and take comfort in knowing your reputation remains solid in the eyes of those that count.