( CNN ) -- There was a time when my biggest fear was getting my brain munched by zombies . But that childhood fright of Halloweens past has given way to a scare that often grips me as a journalist today -- the fear of failure . Alright , I know I 'm not alone here . Many of you know exactly what I 'm talking about . It 's those moments of workplace indecision , avoidance , or perhaps procrastination all due to the simple fear of making a mistake on the job . So when I sat down with Trend Micro chief Eva Chen for CNN 's `` Leading Women , '' I made sure to hit the topic . You see , just months into her job as CEO of the company , she had to manage through an episode of failure . Make that , monstrous failure . In 2005 , one of the company 's signature files caused computers worldwide to crash . The effects were so far-reaching , the bug even forced ever-timely trains in Japan to grind to a halt . Did that epic fail make Chen doubt herself or her ability to be the CEO ? Not at all . Instead , she focused on a solution . `` There were two problems I tried to address , '' she tells me . `` One is external -- how do I help the system quickly recover ? My customers ' businesses need to continue . `` The second one is internal : how do I make sure that the values of Trend Micro -- innovation and 'dare to fail ' -- really stayed . '' Chen says the lessons learned from that mistake helped propel Trend Micro from a player in traditional antivirus software to the forefront of cloud computing protection . A company philosophy at Trend Micro reads as follows : `` We drive our growth by innovation ; we encourage risk-taking and our management style dares you to fail . '' That call to embrace failure , like firewalking or `` trust falls '' at a corporate retreat , can reek of management malarkey . But Chen is a leader who sincerely takes it to heart . To this day , she still does n't know which employee was responsible for the faulty file that crashed computers across the planet . Nor does she ever want to know . Risk-taking and fear management came early in her career when Chen founded the company in 1988 with her brother-in-law , Steve Chang , and sister , Jenny Chang . Cold-calling potential customers , she found herself reluctant and afraid to speak on the phone . To address her phobia , Chen mined her memories and rediscovered a moment in early childhood when her mother was speaking on the telephone just as lightning struck a tree that fell inside their home and set ablaze the phone 's wiring . `` The impression just made me feel that the telephone line would kill my mom , '' Chen tells me . `` So something that you never expect -- that image from my childhood -- actually became an obstacle when I tried to do business . '' Chen says once she identified that fear , it went away . `` Every time you overcome one obstacle , you feel you 've learned something and you grow . That 's the joy of entrepreneurship and taking challenges . '' So what is the one obstacle that is holding all of us back ? Did you ever turn down a challenging assignment because the depressive realist inside said you could n't do it ? ( I know I have . ) How many times have you failed to truly speak your mind at a meeting ? ( Guilty . Many times over . ) Instead of sitting on our hands , we should raise them high and dare to ask that question , make that assertion , or take on that new challenge . Like Eva Chen , we must lean into our fear to conquer it .
Eva Chen is CEO of Cloud Security -- a Japanese software security company . Within days of becoming CEO , a problem caused worldwide problems for the business . Chen turned problem into success , turned company into cloud software protection leader .