I noticed my coworker (let’s call him John) was acting cold toward me a couple weeks ago, and yesterday I found out why.

A client I’d never met made a very serious accusation to me, and I didn’t realize at first that she was talking about John. When I thought it was some new guy at another office, I took it seriously. When I found out it was him, I knew it couldn’t be true.

It’s an infamous ethics violation in my industry, but John has no incentive to do it. I could believe it of someone really new who was under a lot of pressure and did something stupid to hit a metric, but John is experienced, up for a major promotion, and he knows full well he wouldn’t get paid on it. There’s absolutely no benefit in him breaking a serious rule which could get him fired.

He was out that day, so I talked to someone I used to work with who’s an expert on things like this. I told her there was no way he did this and why, and let her know exactly what the client said. She agreed, and advised me on how to handle it.

It took up much of my day, but I got the sale canceled out as if it had never happened, which is what the client wanted. I documented everything the client said, my research into the transaction, the information that John was not benefiting from the sale, etc, and marked everything resolved with no action required. When I had to explain the situation to back office, I explicitly said that I understand the seriousness of the allegations, but I know John and am confident that he didn’t do this.

Anyway, I got everything resolved, and my manager and the client were happy. I planned to give John the rundown, but when he got back I was sick. When I got back, I had completely forgotten. I didn’t think of it again until yesterday.

It turns out someone told him about the allegation and that I handled it and closed the account. This person wasn’t privy to how I handled it or the fact that I went to bat for him.

I get that he was probably worried when he heard about it, but he’s had a chance to read my notes and he would have been out within a week if the company thought he did it. He also could have asked me or the manager instead of listening to someone who only heard about the initial complaint and nothing else.

I get that I should explain things to him, but I really don’t want to. We aren’t particularly close and it doesn’t hurt anything for him to be distant. I don’t want to tell him I protected him and make him feel bad for how he’s acting now. Anyway, I’m anticipating a job offer in the next week or two. I won’t be here in a month, so I don’t actually need to improve our relationship. I don’t need him to like me.

I’d rather just let things be, and let him realize that he’s fine because he’s ethical, and because we know he’s ethical and did the right thing. I know he’ll be ok and get his promotion, and I’ll move on to a role that suits me better. I just have this nagging feeling that I might be a dick or a coward for not stepping up and telling him everything.

Edit: thank you all for your input. I’m going to submit a commendation, so there’s no question what I think of him. If he wants to talk about this situation, we can when he’s ready