The Bcc Blindside or The Deception of Bcc in Emails
If yours is a corporate culture where Bcc (blind carbon copies) in emails is commonplace, you may be encouraging deception and engaging in underhandedness and workplace politics. It might be the right time to pause and ask yourself if a corporate culture shift is required and if you want to be part of the solution.
During a recent conversation with a close friend and business executive, he described a situation at work where he found out, after the fact, that a colleague at Bcc’ed his boss on an email. Upon receiving the Bcc of the email, his boss called my friend to discuss the matter. The sender had decided to camouflage the fact that he was using the email as a means to score political points. My friend had nothing to hide and clarified the situation with his boss and then addressed the Bcc perpetrator, which left the individual somewhat shaken. This led us to exchange on other situations when we had experienced what I call the Bcc blindside.
I recalled that in the earlier days of emails I had not even been aware of the ability to Bcc until one day, I had my boss enquire about a situation that had been circulating via email. After debriefing him, I returned to check if he had in fact been copied and I could not identify him on the TO or CC. I later realized that he had been Bcc’ed. I decided there and then that this was not a behaviour that I wanted to encourage and made the leadership commitment that I would discourage anyone working for me to use Bcc and I have upheld that commitment ever since. I also sought out the perpetrator and made my position quite clear.
If you are a person that uses Bcc in your emails, ask yourself why.
What are you trying to camouflage that you have to hide the identity of a recipient?
Why are you perpetuating this behaviour, which, for the most part, can only be interpreted as underhanded?
Who did you learn this behaviour from and can you unlearn it?
If this is a generally acceptable way of communicating in your organization, how can you play your part in putting an end to it?
Bcc is deceptive because it hides a very important aspect of the communication: the total list of participants.
Next time you are Bcc'ed, call the sender of the email and ask him or her to explain themselves. Following this, make it clear to them that you encourage open and transparent communications and that the use of Bcc in emails is something you find deceptive. If they think that their colleague’s boss needs to be copied, then do so openly as a CC so as to give the same courtesy to a colleague that one would expect in return.
Offer them this alternative. Instead of Bcc, they can forward an important email. If they need to give someone a heads-up that an important issue is being discussed that might require their involvement at a later date, then forward the email as a heads-up or courtesy with a clear message that they are not looking for them to intervene at this point. This approach will prevent them from seeing the email responses to the original email and spying on the ensuing email exchanges.
