The Importance of Confidentiality 

Ms. Nikki Cormier
Director of Client Services
The Registry

As Registry Chancellor George Matthews often says, “fit” is central to everything that we do. As an interim executive or senior administrator, the expectation is to hit the ground running—fast. Fit can either remove barriers to success, if it is good, or add to them if it is not.

In the pursuit of fit, The Registry team must pursue often sensitive and confidential details about the nature of the interim need. Going beyond primary questions of salary and housing allowance, we also examine the secondary and tertiary details about each assignment. Why did the incumbent leave? Was the employee terminated or did he or she step down voluntarily? Does the incumbent know that they are going to be removed? Are there accreditation issues, programmatic challenges, budgetary shortfalls, or pending, necessary personnel changes?

Although these types of questions may not be easy for a college or university to answer, we know that you—our members—expect to have access to this kind of information. As interims, when the runway for success is so short, insight into the nature of the role is vital for you in assessing your own skills as a candidate. At the same time, from the perspective of the institution, to share candid answers to these inquiries requires the utmost confidence in The Registry and the integrity of its staff and members. Our clients expect that the information they disclose will remain confidential, and rightly so.

For these reasons, The Registry’s protocol is to share notices of interim opportunities with Registry members only. Moreover, we expect that our members will not share that information with peers or colleagues who are not part of The Registry’s membership. This question sometimes follows: If I receive an opportunity notice and believe that a friend or colleague would be the perfect fit for the role, can I forward them the notice if they are not a member?

In our view, this would be a breach of the trust between the college or university and The Registry, and thus the answer is no. However, we do understand that you may in fact know someone who would be the perfect fit for the role. What then? We would suggest this solution: Without disclosing the details of the opportunity to that friend or colleague, consider informing the individual that you are interested in nominating him or her to The Registry. Similarly, you are encouraged to call or e-mail the Principal managing the assignment directly and let that Principal know that you have someone you would like to nominate to be considered for the interim assignment.

The Registry Principal can then determine what details about the opportunity can be shared with that individual. In some cases, it may be that the institution has given us permission to speak candidly about their interim needs. In others, we may be limited regarding what information we can share.

By following these procedures, we can ensure that The Registry’s Gold Standard for integrity is upheld.