In an office environment, what situations might arise where confidentially is critical?

Question

This is a question that is on my questionaire for a position as a student clerk in a residence hall at Bowling Green State University.

Answer 1

This is not a black and white question. One thing is that there are a lot of situations that will arise that will be an ethical choice rather than legal/illegal. Anything that has a persons SSN or personal information is confidential. ALL medical records are confidential. Salary, monetary transactions etc. In all offices there is a lot of gossiping etc and you need to be careful about what you say and who you tell things.

Answer 2

I'd need more detail. What jobs are done in this office?

Answer 3

At a University, that's easy:

You could have access to keys to student rooms or mailboxes.

Access to social security numbers (on hard copy or electronic records).

Access to student educational records (grades, personal info).

Requests for information about students or employees & what you can/cannot tell people.

If the office accepts credit cards in payment for anything--the handling of the credit card information.

Access to any HR/payroll information.

Answer 4

Dealing with HR situations.

Dealing with customer information.

Dealing with financial information of the company and its customers.

Actually anything that takes place in a business sense should be considered confidential as it may affect the ability of the company to operate properly or the information could be used against the company by its competitors.