What happens if you just clear out the clutter?
What a Coaching Scenario is
Not quiz style. This is judgement practice — you're put inside a real situation from human-services work and asked what you would actually do. It draws on the knowledge you use on the job, not the kind you can look up.
Every choice changes what happens next, and every choice gets a coaching beat straight after it: what drew you toward that option, and how it played out. What's held back is the verdict on your path, so you stay with what you'd genuinely do rather than working out what you're supposed to say.
- 4 decisions
- Each one shaped by the one before it. No two paths through are the same.
- Coaching as you go
- A beat after every decision, naming the pull behind your choice and where it led.
- A full debrief
- Your whole path replayed at the end, with the reasoning behind each decision you made.
- Evidence you can keep
- A completed scenario is recorded in your PracticeLab and appears in your downloadable ProofKit.
Scenarios are made to be talked about. Most people finish one still turning it over, which makes them a ready-made prompt for supervision, a team meeting or a conversation with a colleague — everyone walks the same situation, and comparing where you each landed is often where the real learning happens.
This one ends with
Next time you encounter client records — physical or digital — ask yourself: do I actually know what our retention schedule says for this record type, and could I explain our disposal process to a new colleague?
The situation
You are Mia, an administration officer at a community health and social services organisation. You've been asked to tidy up the physical filing room — a job that's been sitting on the to-do list for months. As you work through the shelves, you find a significant number of client files that haven't been touched in years. Some date back more than a decade. Others are from three or four years ago.
The files contain a mix of referral forms, case notes, medical summaries, consent forms, and correspondence. Some clients may still be active with other services; others have clearly moved on. The files are taking up space, and your manager has mentioned offhandedly that the organisation needs to "clear out the clutter" before the office moves to a new building next quarter.
You're not sure what the rules are. Can you simply throw old files in the recycling bin once they're a few years old? Do they need to be scanned and kept digitally? Is there a minimum period they must be retained? And if they do need to be destroyed, how does that happen safely?
You know this matters — these are real people's private information — but you don't have a clear picture of what "doing it right" actually looks like. You decide it's time to figure that out before anyone starts stuffing things into bin bags.
What you're practising
Before you start, notice
Real-world decisions in scenarios like this are shaped as much by feeling as by reasoning. People often notice one of these pulls — naming what you feel before you decide is half the skill.
- The urge to be helpful by getting the job done quickly — especially when a deadline like an office move is looming
- Uncertainty that feels easier to push aside than to name out loud
- The assumption that 'old' equals 'safe to delete or discard'
- Discomfort with asking questions that might expose what you don't know
Policies this draws on
- Privacy Act 2020 (NZ) / Privacy Act 1988 (AU)
- Health Records legislation (jurisdiction-specific)
- Your organisation's records management policy
- Australian Standard AS ISO 15489 — Records Management
- Your own organisation's policies take precedence — check them where they apply.
Heads up — coaching scenarios work differently. You'll make a sequence of decisions as the situation unfolds, and after each one you'll get a coaching beat: what drew you toward that choice, and how it played out. The one thing held back is the verdict on the path you took — that lands in the debrief at the end, with your whole walk replayed alongside it.
New to Good Practice Hub? Coaching Scenarios come with PracticeLab Pro, or browse the practice library to see what else is there.
More Coaching Scenarios
See the whole library
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