Unintended Consequences

 

The term unintended consequences refers to positive or negative outcomes or effects that are not intended or not anticipated.

 

Example:

 

The committee staff did their best to consider every possible outcome of implementing S. 365 reaching out to every organization, association, and industry that they thought might be impacted by the legislation to avoid any unintended consequences.  Unfortunately, they had not anticipated that the trucking industry would be impacted by the new homeland security bill until the lobbyist for the American Trucking Association (ATA) found out about the bill and contacted the committee chairman’s office.