“When I think about what a whistleblower is, and does, I am in two minds. On the one hand, I can see the moral value of what whistle blowing does to expose the corruption or danger. On the other hand, in many whistle blowing cases, I see too many companies brought down and people’s lives and finances ruined.” These are the words of a CEO of a leading corporation, when he was asked about the whistle blowing. Basically, whistle blowing is when a current or a former employee reveals what he/she considers as unprincipled or unlawful conduct to a superior management or to an outside authority or the public. Reasons Why the CEO may have had Conflicting Views on Whisle BlowingMany times, whistleblowers find themselves in a catch-22 situation of having to choose between their responsibilities of having to care for the good of the public, or their duty of loyalty to their employers.
This means that whistle blowers have to deal with the contradictory demands of the morality of principle versus the morality of fidelity. In confronting these conflicting demands, a whistleblower finds himself in a challenging position of having to digress from the demands of one kind of morality, in order to be in a position of being in compliance with the demands of another kind of morality. This particular CEO must have made the statement, due to the consequences of the acts of wwhistle blowing. In as much as these acts expose to the corrupt practices that cost organizations large amounts of money, they also bring down so many companies, like it was with the case of Enron (Johnson, 2003).
On the other hand, the whistle blower is just a responsible employee who is doing his job to protect the interests of the company.By and large, the CEO, in his statements, had the concerns about the obligations of loyalty and obedience as represented by the classic case of contending moral values. Consequently, the situation of differing moral choices call for whistleblowers to be audacious enough and be ready to make intricate choices in which they have to support one or other of the ideals, but definitely not both.
