You are a line manager in a medium-size marketing organisation that creates innovative visuals for companies.

You are a line manager in a medium-size marketing organisation that creates innovative visuals for companies. You have to pitch your idea to a new large corporate company that may bring in a lot of business in the near future. There is unfortunately certain information that you need for your pitch tomorrow on your colleague’s computer. Your colleague is currently away on holiday for another week still. The two of you work closely together and she has given you her login details before. As this deal is important and it can lead to a possible promotion for both of you, you decide to log into her computer. When you log in, you get a few notifications on new e-mail messages. One of the e-mails is from the CEO of one of your biggest competitors thanking your colleague for the data, which you know she was not allowed to share. You quickly close the mail, mark it as unread, get the information you need on the computer and log out. Afterwards you feel guilty that you have breached a level of trust. The information you were after will help you win your contract although you wonder what to do with the information you have just gained. Should you confront her when she is back? Should you let Human Resources know, leading to possible disciplinary action? If so, you will have to declare how you came about the information, which can in turn get you into trouble. What would you do?