ABSTRACT
A more sophisticated reporting officer will adopt a more subtle approach, as illustrated in the two following examples, both based on actual cases known to the author. In the first case, the reporting officer wished to help a female member of his staff (a genuinely efficient junior executive officer) pass a Promotions Board. In the second case, the reporting officer genuinely believed that a certain male member of his staff was below standard and wished to get rid of him. Previous reports on this person, however, had not been unfavourable, and he had done nothing so badly as to deserve a formal adverse report. In most staff reporting situations the whole theory of the forced-choice technique, being based on not trusting the reporting officer to make honest and accurate assessments of staff, is fundamentally wrong. A person's background and life outside office hours should be taken into account by his superiors when considering, e.g. whether to promote him.
