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Guideline E: Personal Conduct

Questionable judgment, dishonesty, or failure to follow rules, including falsifying or omitting information on the security forms.

8,512
decided hearing cases
23%
granted

Specific issues and their outcomes

Falsified the security form
10% granted · 3,040
Personal conduct (unspecified)
27% granted · 2,921
Omission / failure to disclose
26% granted · 2,631
Lack of candor in an interview
11% granted · 1,564
Questionable judgment
25% granted · 1,410
Workplace rules violation
20% granted · 744

Mitigations judges credited most

Promptly corrected the falsification
84
Acknowledgment & remorse
72
Credible explanation of omission
41
Passage of time
20
Rehabilitation evidence
19

Counted only where the judge expressly credited the mitigation, not merely where it was claimed.

What the reference material says about personal-conduct cases

  • The recurring theme across the practitioner literature: the concealment routinely weighs more heavily than the underlying conduct. Prompt, self-initiated correction of the record before confrontation is a recognized mitigating condition. (Practitioner sources; SEAD-4 mitigating conditions)

From our verified reference library: paraphrased from the named sources and reviewed before publication. Descriptive background, not legal advice about any case.

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Descriptive statistics from decided public DOHA cases. Not legal advice or a prediction. † marks samples under 20 cases.