I resigned from my previous role after the company informed me that I was misusing company time through internet usage. They gave me the option of either chance the investigation further or resign with no consequences from the company. This occurred in December 2025.
I recently took on a new role, still in defense, that didn’t specifically require a Secret clearance at time of hiring. That is now changed, though I do not think its essential to function. My company’s FSO said my Secret clearance is good until later this year until I need to renew.
I am not going to lie on my SF-86 and will disclose the reason for leaving truthfully. I am simply asking what the likelihood is of a clearance renewal being approved. Happy to answer questions
Be truthful but don’t elaborate on your SF-86. In an at will environment, companies lie all the time about employee performance. For Christ sakes half the government is getting unjust poor performance reports now, which almost makes the metric meaningless. Chances are someone didn’t like you, you were too expensive, they ran out of work, and you were not using the internet to look at Amazon anymore than anyone else in the company.
The way I’m reading this, all you did was resign rather than wait for an investigation (which could potentially exonerate you just as easily as implicate you). Technically, you don’t have to say anything except you resigned. You could say you resigned under unfavorable terms, but sounds like you were never threatened with being fired, only with an accusation, which you can simply claim was false.
Based on the meeting I had with HR, they had collected two weeks of data on me to support their decision. For timeline of events:
Get called into HR → Ask if I know why I’m there, if I know company policy, my opinion on if what I am doing is right/wrong → I do know why I’m there, I am aware of company policy, and retrospecting the last 24 hours I can guess some weeks are worse than others but I still do my job effectively → HR reems me for the use, cites certain examples of what was searched, then states that based on review and recommendation from manager they are proposing discharge → gives me the option to either resign right now OR go through the full process and get discharged + they contest unemployment → I choose resignation but ask to go through a day as an example → day they go through was more in my favor for others but HR still argued it was enough to recommend termination
Based on their “recommend for discharge” it sounded like they haven’t submitted anything to their formal process yet so they were giving me an out while I still had the chance. Just to give some context.
This probably falls under the SF86 question “left by mutual agreement following allegations.” You would need to disclose it but you can certainly say they were false allegations (assuming you actually do consider them false or BS). Former employers are USUALLY (not always, but usually) very tight-lipped about that to avoid any litigation.
Guess as a follow up to that, how are the chances really that I have my clearance renewed? I’m completely confident that I can communicate how anything that came from this was a “coming to jesus” moment and I won’t let it repeat itself (because that is genuinely how I feel and so far I know I have been doing good at not lettingit happen again), but I know that the recency is the biggest hurdle against me at the moment.
I tried saying i resigned on my SF86 and in my security interview the Special agent said i was “terminated” because someone that was interviewed that didn’t like me said so. I was not. I quit before it ever came to that. They still used it against me. This field is filled with corrupt ppl.
Agreed with @Clearedrob, you should list it as a mutually agreement and just explain it succinctly. A one time employment issue will not cause you to lose a clearance, but if there is a pattern of similar behavior then that is another story. By not disclosing it you run the risk of an appearance of lack of candor, which is a bigger issue.