A New Whistleblower Ethic (Part 2)
The old ethics of whistleblowing, as expressed by de George[1]
and others, was formulated in the 1980s as whistleblowing grew to become a phenomenon. The realities that whistleblowers have
experienced over the past three decades call for a new whistleblower ethic.
A new ethic must first relate to all whistleblowers – the
big-time players like Snowden, Ellsberg, and others not quite as famous as well
as the ordinary employees who report organizational wrongdoing. It does not limit itself to serious and
considerable wrongs, as de George insists, but considers the million or more organizational
issues and wrongs reported in the U.S. each year.
Some states, like New York,
continue to limit whistleblower protection to those who disclose substantial
threats to the public; some, like Louisiana,
require that the wrongs disclosed be actual, not suspected, violations of
law. Some organizations, like the Government Accountability Project,
focus on violations that interest media and the public on a grand scale[2]. But whistleblower complaints range from the very
serious to the far less so.
HomeFirst’s
violation of the food
handler card requirement, for example, was not major, but I reported
it. Others have reported a failure
to report traffic violations, preferences
in job hiring decisions, having to sandbag
a supervisor’s house before a storm, and many other wrongs that win little public
attention. I contend that the human
impact of these million or more small-time disclosures (plus the many wrongs not
disclosed) each year is as significant that of the few high dollar qui tam suits that catch the public eye.
Second, the new ethic accepts that whistleblowers are not always
nice or even honorable people. It is possible
that their former employers’ complaints[3]
about them are correct in many cases – they can be disgruntled, impolite,
disrespectful people who committed wrongs themselves and claim to be
whistleblowers only because they hope to be paid off. They may be misfits of various sorts, and
some have mental health issues. They may
make mistakes in their jobs, and they may hope to harm the organization (or
someone in the organization). Much of
this may be true, but it cannot distract us from honestly evaluating their
allegations.
The public likes its whistleblowers to be saints and heroes[4],
but most are ordinary humans who face a difficult decision. This new
ethic places more, not less, pressure on observers of wrongdoing by making the
action available to everyone. We cannot
excuse ourselves from decision-making simply because the wrong is small and we
are not great.
Another consequence is that every organizational wrong –
take the VW emissions fraud, the killing of innocent blacks by police, sex and
age discrimination in tech companies, FIFA, or any that you like – is witnessed
by numerous insiders who have the opportunity to become whistleblowers in one
fashion or another. That most do not
reveal the wrongs neither excuses them nor elevates those who do.
A third element of the new ethic follows from the history of
retaliations by organizations: whistleblowers need not play fair and are not
limited in their tactics.
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Those who disclose wrongs cannot count on being
treated fairly by their employers, by enforcement agencies, or by the media. As a result, they have no obligation to comply
with rules of engagement promoted by those who will attack them.
-
Unrestricted by established rules for making their
disclosures, whistleblowers may reveal wrongs without warning. They may preemptively disclose them to
enforcement agencies, possibly making them eligible for limited protection
against retaliation, or to media, possibly exposing them to punishment by the
wrongdoer if discovered.
-
They may gather whatever information they seek
to prove their claim, taking care to avoid punishment that could come with
discovery by the wrongdoer.
-
They may start their disclosures and end them
whenever they choose and for whatever reasons they choose. It is the whistleblowers who are in charge of
their disclosures, and not the wrongdoers or those who claim to be
ethicists.
-
They may choose to conceal a wrong – or to discontinue
their disclosure – because they judge the circumstances too dangerous for them
and their families, because they are fearful.
If they do not disclose a wrong as they could have done, they will fail
themselves, but they can recover on another occasion. Whistleblowers do not need to be perfect all
the time; they do not need to be saints or victims.
A fourth element admits opposition to power as a justification
for whistleblowing that is no less valid than high ethics and morality. When the whistleblower makes her disclosure,
she stands up for herself; she states that her existence is as valuable as that
of the organization that opposes her. Whistleblowing
is, first of all, an existential act.
In the view of this ethic, whistleblowing is not primarily a
moral act although morality may be used in justification. It is not the result of a cost-benefit
analysis by the whistleblower although the costs may be summed up after the
fact and the personal and social benefits may be identified in time. It is not fundamentally a prosocial act
although it may benefit segments of society.
Instead, whistleblowing is the act of an individual against power that
is situated in an organization, its managers, and its allies.
Morality should be removed from whistleblowing because corporate
life involves transactions, not moral relationships. One may follow her passion into a profession,
but passion for an employer will be reciprocated only as long as she sustains
the organization’s profit objectives. She
may be fired for any reason or no reason at all. The witness to a wrong may choose to ask a superior
about it, she may report it to someone outside the organization, or she may sit
on it for a while. The decision is hers
to make.
The decision to blow the whistle wells primarily from a
frustration at having witnessed too much for too long – in one organization or many,
at the hands of one manager or many. It is
like a kettle heated until it blows. The
decision puts into action an emotion that cries out “I’ve had enough.”
[1]
First in de George, Richard T. “Ethical
Responsibilities of Engineers in Large Organizations: The Pinto Case.” Business and Professional Ethics 1.1 (1981):
1-14 and later in De George, Richard
T. Business
Ethics. 6th edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Education. 2006
[4] Heumann, Milton, Al Friedes, David
Redlawsk, Lance Cassak, and Aniket Kesari.
“Public
Perceptions of Whistleblowing.” Public integrity 18 (2015): 6-24
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