This story is about transparency. And it very recently happened to me.

We know that transparency is important in Scrum. As a Scrum Master, it’s a value I work to promote within my teams. And the best way to promote a value is to live it out. Yet transparency isn’t always easy.

Case in point.

On Monday, I made a mistake with the guidance I gave to a vendor regarding an important feature of a client’s website. The vendor has not yet acted on my email/deployed that particular feature.

This morning I had a status meeting with the CEO of my client’s company. We discussed this important site update/feature in the meeting because it is something I am monitoring and working on for him. After the meeting, as I was working through after-action issues, I realized the mistake I made. Within 5 minutes I had addressed the mistake with the vendor who is responsible for this particular feature and everything should be set soon.

Whew! Disaster avoided. All set. Let’s move on.

No. We’re not set. Transparency still needs to be addressed. There is still a possibility that something askew may occur as a result of the wrong direction I provided to the vendor – and even if the mistake was to never to come my client’s attention, I felt it was important to be transparent about my mistake due to trust.

5 minutes after I had emailed the vendor I sent another email (a short one: CEOs are busy) to my client briefly explaining my mistake, when I discovered it, as well as how I remediated it.

To be frank, I would have preferred to not email my client: it’s embarrassing to admit mistakes.

Yet transparency is not just for others, it’s for us, too. And we always need to do what’s right, even when it’s not convenient. Actually, most importantly when it is not convenient.