By Dennis M. Barden

A couple weeks ago, I compromised the confidentiality of one of my searches.

I thought I would get that off my chest, because I am one of the most neurotic people in higher education when it comes to confidentiality, and occasionally it is a good thing to remind myself that it is far, far easier to betray a confidence than it is to keep one.

My fellow search consultants and I have written about confidentiality in these pages before, of course. It is a juicy topic, one that in so many ways flies in the face of academic tradition. It is contrary to the nature of most faculty members to keep things confidential. Their job is to discover, to translate, and to communicate; keeping one's counsel is a substantial variation from a standard that is not just procedural but central to the ethos of colleges and universities.

Search professionals understand that. We also know that the standards for conducting faculty searches—the type with which academics are most familiar—are very different from those that govern an administrative search.

And yet we as consultants continue to insist upon confidentiality in the administrative searches we support. We do so for a reason that seems to us obvious: Potential candidates are much more likely to explore an opportunity if they can do so without compromising their current employment or their effectiveness on behalf of their current institutions. While that is not the case (or, at least, less the case) within the professoriate, it is undeniably true for the vast majority of searches for executive leadership.

If we want people to come to the table, learn more about the institution and the position, discuss the opportunity with a search committee, and build their enthusiasm for the job as a result of this purposefully iterative process, we must guarantee them that they may do so without negatively altering their current circumstances.

This approach is in the best interests of the institution that is trying to recruit the candidate, as well. Breaches of confidentiality inevitably lead to candidates' withdrawing from the process before they can fully flesh out their interest in the position. Such breaches can also lead to pre-emptive actions on the part of a candidate's employer—i.e., a counteroffer that removes the candidate from the running.

Too much information. Since I am clearly nothing if not zealous on the subject of confidentiality, how, then, did I screw this up myself?

I was meeting with members of a university's board about its presidential search when the subject of tenure arose. Having had numerous experiences with the difficult issue of whether presidents should be provided tenure as faculty members as part of the offer, I had a story at the ready. I spoke of a recent search I had supported in which the top candidate had had a somewhat nontraditional career path that eventually did result in a tenured faculty position in a professional school. My client, a liberal-arts college, took a highly traditional view of tenure and was forced by the attractiveness of the top candidate to re-evaluate its stance.

The story was apt and the ending happy. Unfortunately, only after I had launched into this anecdote did I remember that some of the folks to whom I was speaking were aware of this particular search and this particular candidate. In essence, I was telling them highly specific details to which they should not have been privy.

That no harm was done does not absolve me of guilt. It was simply stupid of me not to anticipate that my story might be too transparent, and perhaps even stupider not to have done a better job of disguising certain details to protect the key actors.

The point of all this is not a public mea culpa, nor is it another plea for confidentiality in searches for administrative leadership. No, the point is that slipping up is just so easy to do. Even the most well-meaning member of a search committee or an institutional community can let the cat out of the bag, and the outcome can be dramatic regardless of the intention.

Candidates are not immune from "outing" themselves, either. In the not-too-distant past, a candidate in one of my searches was adamant about confidentiality; he was very concerned lest his current campus discover that he was considering a new job. The institution I was supporting was extremely careful and accommodated his desires. All went according to plan until the candidate's children went to school one day and started telling their friends that they might be moving because Daddy might be getting a new job. Like many college towns, this was a small, close-knit community in which such news makes the rounds at the speed of light. To make matters even more complicated, the candidate ended up staying put.

Tell me why. It is easy to slip, and most violations of confidentiality are, in my experience, inadvertent. At the same time, there are more than a few examples of people purposefully sharing confidential information outside of the search-committee context. There are undoubtedly many reasons why. The most popular might be described as "the search for truth." Higher education, as large as it is, is really a rather intimate industry. Seldom do I visit a campus without finding someone who grew up in my hometown, went to my alma mater, or is a close friend of a former colleague. It is natural, then, that search-committee members want to reach out to their graduate-school roommate at the candidate's institution for the inside story.

Natural, yes, but exceedingly dangerous. Seldom, in my experience, do the people on the other end of that phone call consider themselves to be constrained by the possible ramifications of spreading around this newly discovered—and clearly juicy—information. In nearly every case, either the candidate, the institution, or both pay a significant price.

I must admit that I have also had experiences in which a member of the search committee has leaked a candidate's involvement, specifically seeking to undermine the candidacy. It is not unusual for committee members to have strong opinions about the suitability of a candidate. If their views do not carry the day, I have had committee members reach beyond the prescribed process and engage people outside the committee—and outside the institution—in conversation about the candidate. Whether this was done in the search for information (usually the damning kind) or in the hope that by leaking the name the candidate will withdraw is not germane. The transgression and the outcome are generally the same in either case.

An ounce of prevention. What is the head of a search committee to do when confidentiality is breached? Frankly, not much. While such an obvious and costly abrogation of one's responsibility, especially if done purposefully, might well be reasonable grounds for termination (in a case in which the transgressor does not have tenure), I am not aware of any case in which that has happened. Censuring those who caused the breach seldom has impact, and many would consider disqualification from future service on search committees to be a positive development.

The best way to ensure that a breach does not occur is to pre-empt it in one of two ways. The first is to name unimpeachably trustworthy and responsible people to search committees. That can be harder than it sounds when few people are willing and able to serve and many constituencies must be represented. The second way is to talk about the need for confidentiality early and often. My clients are certainly sick and tired of what I call the "neurotic confidentiality lecture" at every meeting, but I give it anyway. Different stages of a search require different levels of awareness. Confidentiality may be the one aspect of a search in which even too much is not enough.

All of that said, no one has been privy to that lecture more often than I, and yet there I sat with egg on my face in front of the very people I would soon be admonishing about confidentiality. Maybe I should change the name of my presentation to the "empathetic confidentiality lecture." But I am still going to deliver it.

Dennis M. Barden is a senior vice president and director of the higher-education practice at Witt/Kieffer, an executive-search firm that specializes in searches for academic and administrative leaders in academe, health care, and nonprofit organizations.