Professional Ethics - Ethics for the Information Age - page 437

To others, insisting that the whistle-blower have convincing documentation is too
strict a condition to be met in order for whistle-blowing to be a moral imperative.
After all, once the whistle-blower has revealed the wrong to another organization, that
organization may be in a better position to gather supporting evidence than the whistle-
blower [17].
Along the same line, some argue that whistle-blowing should be considered an
obligation even when only the first three requirements are met. They hold that people
should be willing to sacrifice their good and the good of their families for the greater
good of society.
Others believe De George goes too far when he gives conditions under which people
are morally required to whistle-blow. These commentators suggest that a person's obliga-
tion to whistle-blow must be weighed against that person's other obligations, such as the
duty to take care of one's family. Whistle-blowing often results in significant emotional
stress and the loss of employment. If it results in a person being labeled a troublemaker,
whistle-blowing can end a career. Hence there are serious emotional and financial con-
sequences to whistle-blowing that affect not only whistle-blowers but also their spouses
and children [9].
Put another way, is it reasonable to take a strictly utilitarian approach to whistle-
blowing? Should we expect potential whistle-blowers to weigh the benefits to a large
number of people against the harm to themselves and their families, and decide to go
public? After all, the whistle-blower has already gone out on a limb to inform manage-
ment of the dangerous situation. It is the managers who made the immoral decision
to cover up the problem, not the whistle-blower. We are asking a lot when we ask in-
nocent people to sacrifice their careers and the welfare of their families for the benefit
of strangers. We shouldn't be surprised to learn that when whistle-blower Al Ripskis
was asked what advice he would give potential whistle-blowers, his immediate reply was
“Forget it!” [18, p. 34].
On the other hand, whistle-blower Carlos G. Bell Jr. chastises fellow engineers for
the way they duck responsibility:
We engineers are almost without exception only too willing to assign moral respon-
sibility to any administrator or executive or politician under whom we can place
ourselves. Our reward for living in such ways is a part of the American dream: we
are involved in very few arguments and year-by-year, we build up sizable pensions
for our old age. [19]
Moral responsibility is different from other kinds of responsibility. First of all, moral
responsibility must be borne by people. While the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con-
stitution may make a corporation a person in the legal sense of the word, a corporation
is not a moral agent. We cannot assign moral responsibility to a corporation or any other
organization [20].
Second, moral responsibility is different from role responsibility, causal respon-
sibility, and legal responsibility in that it is not exclusive [20]. Role responsibility is
responsibility borne because of a person's assigned duties. A company may hire a book-
keeper to send out invoices and pay the bills. It is the bookkeeper's responsibility to get