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Let's say you get a mass-email from your boss containing some organizational information. You have a question, so you send a reply to your boss (not everyone) asking for clarification.

When your boss receives this, the "technical" default behavior of any e-mail client in the world would be to only send the response to the person who sent the e-mail. However, for obvious reasons, your boss may want to include everyone that got the original mass-email, in case someone else has the same question.

Now, for the question of etiquette:

Should your boss:

1. Reply to the e-mail, then add everyone back to the conversation, and reply?


2. Reply to the original sent e-mail, writing a more general addition with the answer contained?

I am a strong believer that #1 is very bad form, as it leaks an e-mail thread (your question) that you don't have consent to spread on. In most cases it's probably harmless, but it irks me nonetheless.

There are of course way worse examples of "e-mail thread leakage", but this one seems pretty straight forward, and is clearly well meant.

People forward emails, and add others to email chains all the time. When they do, they make an assessment about whether the new people have a need for the information (the sender has already decided they do), and whether there's anything sensitive that shouldn't be passed on. They may do this badly or may disagree with your assessment.

There are also many reasons why a sender might trim the audience of a followup email: the topic has changed and some people aren't relevant anymore, or wanting to save other people's time, or to discuss something sensitive.

Your situation is that you trimmed the list to discuss something sensitive. Your boss didn't agree that your question was sensitive, and felt that the entire group needed the information. Heck, he can take any email you send him and forward it to his bosses, or your coworkers, or anyone he thinks would benefit from seeing it, and doesn't need your consent.

The simple answer is, no, there is no blanket etiquette for this situation, because there are many reasons why it might happen. If you thought your boss should have kept your question private, you should request as much. He may still disagree, so if a topic is truly sensitive, and especially if the recipient may not understand or agree, don't put it in email at all. Also don't try to make this your boss's problem by establishing some rules for what is forwardable and what is not, because it won't work. Please internalize: Emails can be and will be forwarded.

I think you should consider if this is really a battle that's worth fighting. If your boss had leaked some personal information about you, then sure, that's a big thing. If it's just an e-mail which you wrote which didn't contain anything special, then don't make a mountain out of a molehill. Don't use up your credit with your boss over little things.

As an aside:

as it leaks an e-mail thread (your question) that you don't have consent to spread on

Not sure about that. Every e-mail you and your boss send on work time belong to the company, not to you.

I think you answered yourself.

The second form is probably the most appropiated one. It is also more time consuming, as the boss has to rephrase your question and answer it, rather than just the second. That's probably the reason they may do it sometimes.

As far as the mail did not contain any personal/relevant information, I would not consider it a big deal, to be honest, even from the etiquette point of view.

If your boss wants to include everyone on this email stream, then it's because he/she wants to. Being a business-related email, there's usually no reason for any of that information to be confidential to only a subset of employees. If there is any confidential information, the boss should know and edit as apporiate.

In terms of looping in the new person, the boss would "Reply All" to the latest email that has everyone on it, and then add the new person to the CC (or To) list as appropriate, and then copy in the missing email content from the most recent exchange that the group isn't aware of.

Like you mentionned already, the second option would be the most formal, and it makes sure that your privacy is respected.

However, depending on how busy the person responding is and the workplace mentality regarding questions (I personally love when people ask questions instead of not knowing, it means they care!) someone might simply to everyone involved, ideally with something showing that it is a good question.

Not related to the question, but I think it is worth a mention... Depending on the workplace and its politics, sometimes emails can get forwarded around. I personally like to write my emails so that I wouldnt be ashamed if the CEO was to read them... For other things, I.M. or in person are always good ways to get short answers to something you may not want a trace of.