This challenge flips the script. You'll see how careless visualization (like a truncated axis) and biased narrative phrasing can take a picture of truth and intentionally twist it into a review so negative, it forces a valuable employee to disengage. This is a performance review for ‘Alex P. Formance,’ The data is designed to be factually correct, but presented in a way that generates a negative and unfair conclusion.

Misrepresentation doesn’t require malice. Often, the most damaging ethical failures in data analysis stem from carelessness, technical ignorance (e.g., truncating an axis), or simply allowing confirmation bias to influence the narrative. You must first build the Misleading Charts, recognizing how technical negligence—not evil intent—can destroy an employee’s morale and lead directly to the professional disengagement known as Quiet Quitting.

Conclusion

The axis range that doesn’t start at 0 calls attention to the one bad mark. Color psychology signals “danger” or “poor performance” even when the data is positive because of the red/orange color. The selective time grouping for reporting errors obscures the full context by only showing a slice of data that supports the negative narrative.

Ethical Narrative Summary

Alex demonstrates exceptional consistency and quality across the review period.

• Project Completion: Alex met or exceeded the 90% goal in 10 of 12 months, maintaining an annual average of 92.5%

• Customer Satisfaction: CSAT scores were consistently high, averaging 4.59 out of 5.0, exceeding the team goal.

• Opportunity for Growth: A single outlier for Reported Errors (Month 7: 3 errors) provides a coaching opportunity to explore root causes and reinforce process steps for future high-pressure projects.

• Overall Conclusion: Alex is a high-performing asset to the team.

See Also

“You have the power to influence your audience.” (Section 5.6, “From Data to Insights”)

“The words used to frame the question influence the answer the audience chooses.” (Section 5.6.4, “Tell a Story”)

“Start numerical axes at zero. Time data should flow left to right and be continuous.” (Section 5.7.2, “Best Practices”)

Reference

Young, C. (2025). Tableau at Work. CRC Press.