Hiding a mistake at work turns one bad hour into a bad month.

Mistakes have a natural size and concealment adds to it. Caught early, most things are a short awkward conversation and a correction, but once hidden, the error keeps working in the background while other people build on top of it. What eventually surfaces is the original problem plus everything downstream plus the fact that you knew.

If something is wrong right now, say it today, to the person who can fix it, with what you think happened and what you have already tried. Nobody remembers the mistake as clearly as they remember how fast you flagged it.