Adam,
After 20 years of working in the computer industry, I now support Avionics systems directly related to overall 'Safety of Flight'. Although our system is quad-redundant, our constant focus is to ensure that our troubleshooting results have correlation to the observed malfunction, that mistakes don't occur during subsequent repair activity, and finally that the Operational Checks that we perform to re-certify the jet as Airworthy are followed to the letter.
To guard against human error, we employ a 2-man concept - one person/team performs the repair, and a second individual will come in, inspect the work, and then, when everyone agrees that the real fix is in, *both* individuals sign off the grounding writeup.
Given the above, as a senior team member who often provides this cross-checking inspection function (thereby taking ultimate responsibility for the repair) it is of critical important to me that I can trust not only what I can inspect directly, but also what I am told by the person who performed the repair, possibly covering many man-hours of troubleshooting & repair. ("Were you able to duplicate the failure at will prior to removing any parts? How many times did you run the Self-Test? Did the computer that you removed from the aircraft fail on the bench? Did the bench failure correlate to the malfunction observed by the pilot? Etc., etc)
What does all this have to do with you?
A: Here's how I tend to trust the person who I am inspecting, ordered from LOWEST to HIGHEST:
I) I've never worked with the person before, but they insist that they do perfect work and never make a mistake. (Unaware self-promoter)
II) I've never worked with the person before, but they demonstrate due diligence, and if they are uncertain about a step they don't try to hide the fact. (Ego-free Self-aware Craftsman)
III) Have worked with the person before, and they have demonstrated a perfect track record to date. (ie: Due-diligence, but they are still in the beginning phase of their career.)
IV) Have worked with the person before, and when they made a mistake, without hesitation they brought it fully out into the open, (even if they could have successfully hidden it) dissected it so that everyone else could fully understand how the mistake could be made, and even made sure that when new people joined the shop that they were brought up to speed on the mistake so that they would be less likely to repeat it. (Experienced, Seasoned, Avionics technician with requisite Personal Integrity.)
In all instances if I have to inspect/sign off someone else's repair, I prefer that it be a member of category IV. Even though I trust this individual, I will still ask all the same questions, with the same degree of focus, but that is what they want me to do, for under the 2-man concept, we win as a team, or lose as a team.
I cannot tell you how many times this approach has allowed us to catch a mistake before the aircraft was returned to service, including my own. I sleep well at night, but only because everyone I work with inspects my work just as carefully as I inspect theirs - every team member is expected to voice their concerns, irrespective of rank or seniority.
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Congratulations, by your public admission of your mistake in such a way that others can learn from it you have proven yourself to be a Category IV individual in my book. You are a member of an exclusive group of people.
Great example for others -- Well done!
dbm
