Andrew Haig, PMP, M.Sc.’s Post

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Hilarious experience last week and it shows why I place so much value in the 4 eyes approach to work. I reviewed a piece of data from a colleague regarding some quotes, made a number of adjustments and updates to the Excel and shared it back with the small team involved in the task at the end of the day. I get an email back from him overnight (paraphrased except for the key sentence): You are wrong, there is a mistake in here. I have waited 11 years to be able to say this to you. I read it, laughed as I knew I had rushed the end of the task myself and he was correct, I had linked a formula to the wrong cell. I did notice something looked slightly "off" with the answer but it was not so bad that it made me go back & look at the data before sending it out, I had planned to take another look in the morning to satisfy my curiosity. Saw him later that day, he looked me in the eye, smiled and said, you are usually telling me where I have an error, it took 11 years for me to find yours, I am going to enjoy my day today. I told him he should, he found the error I made, I was glad he found it and thank you for doing that. (while smiling) I have been a strong proponent of the 4 eyes approach for a long time and this is a perfect example of how it works. Sometimes the answer looks plausible enough that you just go with it, but when it is checked, the error is found. We all make mistakes, finding, correcting & learning from them is key. Which is why I am sharing a, fortunately non critical, error and what can be learned from it.

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