Question: I've been hired at a smallish company to be the sole sysadmin. I'm supposed to take over, among other things, responsibility for Active Directory. I've had a look at the current setup, suggested a few improvements and said I'd need a dedicated administrative account within the Domain Admins group with an explanation of why I'd need it and what it would be used for.

Bossman gets visibly worried and asks if I'd also have access to a file share with some confidential employee documents. "Not explicitly, but being the administrator I could grant myself the necessary permissions", I explain. Bossman says I need to figure out some sort of process to make sure any administrative tasks get supervised by a manager.

I honestly find this approach quite offensive. I can understand I'm new and he doesn't know me, but he hired me to do precisely THIS job and I am after all an experienced system administrator with excellent references!

**Does anyone have any experience working in such an environment? Should I get worried about my future here? How can I get my boss to trust me with the tools I need to do my job?**

Please note I don't work for a government/defense/security contractor, there's currently no legislation requiring me to be supervised and the company does not handle PII except for that of it's employees.

Answer: 
I basically agree with [jbh's answer](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/86669/19325), but would go a bit further.

Your attitude should be "I'm a professional sysadmin. I use only the minimum privileges necessary to do my job and keep things working. I will be able to deal with problems sooner if I don't need a manager to supervise me. However, I understand I'm new here and it will take time for you to learn to trust me."

Embrace the supervision. Design a configuration and a set of protocols that ensure you cannot do the actions that worry your boss without a manager supervising you. Suggest that they should have an outside consultant review the configuration and protocols to check they do what you say they do. Of course, you can have absolutely no involvement in selecting the consultant.

Keep a log of your activities, including every time you request a manager, and when the manager was in fact available. Do you need to do any of the supervised activities on an emergency basis outside working hours? If so, suggest there should be an on-call manager to supervise you.

Included in your reporting to your manager the cost of the supervision in terms of delays in solving urgent problems.

One of two things will happen. Either you will very rarely need supervision, and it will be unimportant, or it will collapse under its own weight. I don't think sitting watching a sysadmin at work is going to be a fun and interesting activity for the typical manager.
You've just told your new boss that your position comes with some business risks/liabilities that he didn't know about. It might be that these are necessary liabilities that enable you to do your job, but all your boss is aware of right now is the risk. You need to show him the benefit - tell/show him how the value you add to the company by having those permissions outweighs the risk that it carries.

If your boss is not convinced, you may have to make do with having what you may view as unnecessary supervision for a time. If this is the case, I would not make any efforts to circumvent the supervision. Make every effort to show yourself to be trustworthy and above-board. Ideally, your boss will see that supervision is not needed for certain tasks. If not, you can bring it up after an appropriate amount of time (as a new hire I'd probably wait at least 90 days) and see if your boss agrees that the supervision is not an effective use of everyone's time.