On one side was the daughter of a senior public servant, who grew up in Canberra and went on to lead the Finance Department.
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In the chair next to her was a man who spent his childhood travelling around Australia, admittedly unaware then of the public service and how it touched his life.
Jane Halton and former Environment Department secretary Gordon de Brouwer appeared something of a federal bureaucracy yin and yang, speaking on Friday morning about their paths to some of the Australian Public Service's most influential roles.
They were at once contrary and complementary. Dr de Brouwer, with a background in economics, told young public servants at the Institute of Public Administration Australia event in Canberra about his old department's use of psychometric testing.
"I love it when economists discover psychology," Ms Halton interjected, ribbing her former colleague. They'd try and claim it as their own, labelling it "behavioural economics" and tilting at Nobel Prizes, she joked.
The second woman in Australia to lead a federal department, she grew up in a family enmeshed with the public service. Still, as a teen disappearing from school at lunch to Woden Plaza, she never imagined joining the bureaucracy.
"I kind of became the accidental public servant," Ms Halton said. She stayed for decades, leading the Health Department and, later, Finance. There was always something keeping her in the bureaucracy.
"Thirty-three years later I figured out what was causing it, and I decided to go do something else," she said, with a dash of humour.
On a more serious note: "You join to do a job and then all of a sudden you see the opportunity, you see things that are absolutely riveting, they're so interesting," Ms Halton said.
"Importantly, there was always something that needed doing."
For Dr de Brouwer, his journey to the Environment and Energy Department's top job started with an economics and law degree, and an early stint in BP's bitumen business.
The Treasury, then at the centre of Australia's transformation into a deregulated economy, drew him from the private sector. Bitumen, or economic policy. It was an easy choice.
"That was just the light to me," he said.
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In many ways so different, Ms Halton and Dr de Brouwer share this in common: They embraced variety on their route to leadership. They're also at one when asked whether it's important to have different experiences and try new things.
"It can be, for somebody, a legitimate choice to focus on a particular content area or ecosystem," Ms Halton said.
Those in the public service's leadership positions, however, tended to have diverse experiences. It helped them see issues from multiple points of view when they led an organisation. Ms Halton, now in the private sector, said the company boards that worked really well were those with people from different backgrounds.
"It's exactly the same when it comes to the public sector."
Public servants, like anyone on a career path, might have a fixed view of their future trajectory. Ms Halton recommended they stay open to others steering them down roads they hadn't anticipated.
Dr de Brouwer didn't initially see the benefits of variety earlier in his career, spending 20 years focusing on the economy. Treasury was about developing beautiful ideas, and handing them to the minister.
It was his turn at the Prime Minister's Department that showed him a different set of issues, and the importance of implementing programs.
"Doing different things, the world opened up in Prime Minister and Cabinet."
It happened again when he joined the Environment Department, exposing him to science, law and, yes, psychology.
"A universe appears and you realise you've been living in a little orbit here, and there's a big universe out there," he said.
No career is without many mistakes, of course. Asked about hers, Ms Halton pointed to a "class" of errors, where she failed to stand back from the day-to-day of her job and reflect on where she stood in a given situation. There was value in "Alice in Wonderland" moments, going down the rabbit hole and reflecting.
"All of a sudden you see, you have this clarity of view that was literally only a step away from where you were previously," she said.
Dr de Brouwer, on the same question, said he learned from the staff backlash when he tried rolling out a performance management system at the Environment Department. It worked at Treasury, but public servants in his new department felt it ignored their direct relationships with managers. The economist, by contrast, had been trained to think in terms of a normal distribution.
At the time, he admitted his mistake and learned to look at the culture of an organisation before making changes.
Yin and yang. Contrary and complementary. They've moved in opposite directions and crossed paths along the way. Ms Halton has dived into the corporate world and Dr de Brouwer is on the panel of the major review of Australia's public service, due to report next month. On the findings, he kept mum.
The room, at Discovery House in the heart of Woden, was full of the bureaucracy's up and comers. Dr de Brouwer's parting words to them about careers may have been a surprise: Above all, enjoy it.
"People often compare themselves to others," he said.
"That stuff is completely wasted time, completely wasted energy.
"It's actually enjoying it and doing it that signals to others that you're good at your job and you should be promoted."