Made a mistake at work, meeting has been put in with my manager

Sounds pretty minor OP in the scheme of things.

They might get a bit obsessive about it, but that doesn’t mean their response is reasonable.

Or it might be nothing to do with you and an ongoing performance issue of the person you’re checking? Maybe they need more data to help them help that employee. Try not to jump to conclusions, and just go in prepared and calm with the tools previous posters have given you.

View this as an opportunity to find out how well this organisation responds when things go wrong - and believe them when they show you. If they are going to be difficult about this, imagine a real mistake of consequence! You have an opportunity potentially to get out now (soon) before anything really does go wrong.

If the meeting takes on a more formal tone than you’ve been expecting, don’t be afraid to hold up a hand and ask if there is a formal process underway, and if yes, consider asking for the meeting to be rescheduled so you can have someone with you.

Equally if the meeting includes your team/peers and the manager leads the conversation away from processes and criticises you, ask if that conversation can be in a private, separate meeting.

I'd acknowledge the error but wouldn't be going in all overly sorry and with action plans to prevent etc. Mistakes happen, and this was picked up in the next review step anyway. It's unrealistic to expect no mistakes going forward.

Write down an action plan with suggested measures to rectify this for the future. Print two copies - at the start of the meeting place it on the table so they can see that you have already tried to think of a plan .
The fact that you are so concientous and worried speaks volumes about your commitment to your role

The 1st thing to do is admit that it was your mistake

the 2nd thing is to think about the process that allowed this to happen and the controls you might suggest to mitigate this situation happening again

I once made a mistake at work which cost my company £10,000. Everyone was terribly kind and supportive about it. If you get fired for this it will be the gravest injustice of all time.

Hopefully it’s just going to be a chat about how to stop it happening again and not a bollocking over a very understandable error.

I don't know your organisation but that seems a bit much, if you aren't on a string of repeated failures.

Could this meeting simply be part of a 'rectification process' to show the client that your company is taking steps to avoid the mistake in future?

Love the Better Call Saul reference @HyggeTygge !

This sounds so minor. Like, there was no impact, you put it right, and also you were not even the author. Yea, your job to check but unless that’s your sole job focus (ie quality control) then it’s very unfair and unjust to attribute it all to you. Even if it was all you, it’s still just a simple human error. Literally everyone on this thread has said ‘don’t sweat it’ - if the company makes a huge deal of actually or very little real world impact then the issue is with the company.

I mean, Liz Truss is still working so I don’t think you need to worry.… she got her numbers wrong big time, and has still lived to tell the tale.

Honestly I’m in an internal pipeline where for want of a better phrase, I’m the client. I spotted something had been put on the wrong code today, one number transposed so very much the same thing.

I know it’s internal so not quite the same but I emailed querying it, got the paper trail and asked the person who’d made the mistake to rectify it in the accounts next month.

As the ‘client’ I’d be very cross if anyone was raked over the coals for this. It’s human error, there was no loss. I hope it’s just you catastophising - if your manager thinks it’s a problem it’s a them/organisation/process issue. And I say that as someone who is a slave to attention to detail and would be doing exactly the same as you right now!

So no money lost then. No surgery went wrong. Client won't really care or remember, no matter how important your manager thinks your company is.

Don't give it any more thought.

This. They have a rubbish system. Suggest they change it going forward.

I was wondering the same 🤔 I'm sure it'll all be good though, man

Yes, but the new employer may contact the former employer!

Read this now and then send it round to all the attendees before the meeting (and ask if they want you to moderate/chair)
retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=The_Prime_Directive

Remember it’s only a job if you don’t work there you will work somewhere else

Did you follow the process correctly and in line with the training?
What failsafes are in place to pick up errors?

I would be confident. I would own up and say yes, unfortunately, on this occasion I got two numbers round the wrong way, I’m human and I’m sorry. But I would not be showing fear or let them make me feel awful for such a small error.
I would be considering ideas to prevent it happening again and preface my suggestion with ‘As small errors like this are easy to make but can have larger consequences, I suggest X, Y, Z moving forward, what would your suggestions be?’

Don’t go in all “mea culpa”

You go in and do an after-action review:

1. this was the error (human error by the person who wrote the report, then a second human error by the person who reviewed the report),
2. this is how the error was finally identified
3. this was the impact of the error (financial or reputation all or legal or whatever)
4. this is what we did to report/mitigate the error once it was identified
5. this was the ROOT cause of the error,
6. this is how we prevent it in future.

Root cause might be:

• inappropriate reliance on human controls to prevent and detect manual error
• insufficient experience and training of staff
• time pressure (eg checking last minute changes to hit a tight deadline)
• inability to identify what changes had been made to the report (was there a “track changes” function to show and actively accept changes)
• if you had already reviewed the report once you’d have a confirmation bias - thinking “I’ve checked this and it was fine”. A second review maybe should have a different/fresh pair of eyes on it?

Ultimately you should be thinking about how to STOP the errors occurring - what caused the person who prepared the report to make the error - was it careless?

In any human process mistakes will happen.

If the errror is critically important (eg someone’s life depends on it, like a pharmaceutical prescription) there will be a bucket load of processes and controls. The fact there isn’t says this company is either exposing itself and its employees to too much risk, or the risk is tolerable.

Quick one: Own up, apologise and have a clear idea what 'quality checks' you will employ to ensure this never happens again. Or have suggestions about quality checks if it is for your employer to add or maybe a tool the need to pay for.

Without quality control idea, this could get v bad.

You are a human being and people make mistakes. You are not a machine.

If there was a backstory of you regularly making mistakes at work then that would be different but everyone has an off day at some point.

Just be honest and say you indeed made a mistake and explain how it happened.

Own the mistake.

There should never be a single point of failure.

i can say this with conviction because I also beat myself up over small technical errors and feel so bad and disproportionately worried about comeback. You are human, not a machine. Humans make errors. Often. If this is just an information type report and no actual reputational , human or financial damage then it should just be a really quick, ah ok, got that wrong, I apologize, here is how we should avoid it in future. Even with the best checks, errors will still occur. Many are probably never picked up even with error checking.

one of my colleagues made a huge clanger in his first year of the job. He is excellent and was quickly promoted actually.

owning up and not minimizing is important but also we don’t do ourselves any favours catastrophizing and blaming ourselves.