Reading for Tuesday- Whistleblowing

Whistleblowing: Professionalism, Personal Life, and Shared
Responsibility for Safety in Engineering
Mike Martin

More than most issues, life and death issues in the professions rivet
our attention. Medicine presents us with questions about whether to
remove life-support systems and whether to assist the suicide of
patients who could live, but with a dubious quality of life. Law disturbs
us with the need for defense attorneys to defend clients who they know
are morally guilty of murder or rape and who may engage in those
crimes again if released. And engineering confronts us with agonizing
decisions about whether to whistleblow in order to warn the public of
deadly hazards known only to those’ inside technological corporations.
Right off, this interest in whistleblowing teIls us something
important about engineering. Whistleblowing occurs in all professions,
and most of what I say will. have general relevance to professional
ethics. Only in engineering ethics, however, has whistleblowing been
something of a preoccupation. The reason is clear. Engineers work on
projects that affect the safety of large numbers of people. As profes-
sionals, they live by codes of ethics which ascribe to them a paramount
obligation to protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public, an
obligation that sometimes implies whistleblowing. As employees of
corporations, however, their obligation is to respect the authority of
managers who sometimes give insufficient attention to safety matters,
and who also severely punish whistleblowers. As a result, there are
inevitable conflicts between professional obligations to employers and
the public, as well as conflicts between professional and personal life.

I want to take a fresh look at whistleblowing in order to draw
attention to some neglected issues concerning the moral relevance of
personallife to understanding professional responsibilities. Specifically,
the issues concern: personal rights and responsibilities in deciding how
to meet professional obligations; increased personal burdens when
others involved in collective endeavors fail to meet their responsibilities;
the role of the virtues, especially personal integrity, as they bear on
“living with oneself’; and personal commitments to moral ideals beyond
minimum requirements.

1. Definition and Cases
By “whistleblowing” I have in mind the actions of employees (or former
employees) who identify what they believe to be a significant moral
problem concerning their corporation (or corporations they deal with),
who convey information about the problem outside approved organiza-
tional channels or against pressure from supervisors or colleagues not
to do so, with the intention of drawing attention to the problem (what-
ever further motives they may have).l Examples of serious moral
problems include felonies, immoral treatment of clients or employees
(such as sexual harassment), misuse of public funds, and-my focus
here-technological products that are unacceptably dangerous to the
public.
I will focus on cases where whistleblowers identify themselves.
While anonymous whistleblowing is a legitimate option in some situa-
tions, acknowledging one’s identity and credentials is usually necessary
in order to be taken seriously; in any case, corporations typically have
resources to hunt down “leaks” in order to identify whistleblowers. 2 I
will discuss both external whistleblowing, where information is passed
outside the corporation (for example, to government officials, the press,
professional societies), and internal whistleblowing, where information
is passed to higher management against corporate policy or one’s
supervisor’s directives.
Let me bring to mind three well-known cases.
(1) In 1972 Dan Applegate wrote a memo to his supervisor, the
vice-president of Convair Corporation, telling hirn in no uncertain
terms that the cargo door for the DC-IO airplane was unsafe, making
it “inevitable that, in the twenty years ahead of us, DC-10 cargo doors
will come open and I would expect this to usually result in the loss of
the airplane.,,3 As a subcontractor for McDonnell Douglas, Convair
had designed the cargo door and the DC-10 fuselage. Applegate was
Director of Product Engineering at Convair and the senior engineer in
charge of the design. His supervisor did not challenge his technical
judgment in the matter, but told him that nothing could be done
because of the likely costs to Convair in admitting responsibility for a
design error that would need to be fixed by grounding DC-10′s. Two
years later, the cargo door on a Turkish DC-10 flying near Paris
opened in flight, decompressurizing the cargo area so as to collapse the
passenger floor-along which run the controls for the aircraft. All 346
people on board died, arecord casualty figure at that time for a single-
plane crash. Tens of millions of dollars were paid out in civil suits, but
no one was charged with criminal or even unprofessional conduct.

(2) Frank Camps was a principal design engineer for the Pinto.
Under pressure from management he participated in coaxing the Pinto
windshield through government tests by reporting only the rare
successful test and by using a Band-Aid fix to the design that resulted in increased hazard to the gas tank.

In 1973, undergoing a crisis of
conscience in response to reports of exploding gas tanks, he engaged
in internal whistleblowing, writing the first of many memos to top
management stating his view that Ford was violating federal safety
standards. It took six years before his concerns were finally in-
corporated into the 1979 model Pinto, after nearly a million Pintos
with unsafe windshields and gas tanks were put on the road. Shortly
after writing his memos he was given lowered performance evaluations,
then demoted several times. He resigned in 1978 when it became clear
his prospects for advancement at Ford were ended. He filed a law suit
based in part on age discrimination, in part on trying to prevent Ford
from making hirn a scapegoat for problenls with the Pinto, and in part
on trying to draw further attention to the dangers in the Pinto.

(3) On January 27, 1986, Roger Boisjoly and other senior
engineers at Morton Thiokol firmly recommended that space shuttle
Challenger not be launched. The temperature at the launch site was
substantially below the known safety range for the O-ring seals in the
joints of the solid rocket boosters. Top management overrode the
recommendation. Early in the launch, the Challenger boosters
exploded, killing the seven crew members, to the terrified eyes of
millions who watched because schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was
aboard. A month later Boisjoly was called to testify before the Rogers
Commission. Against the wishes of management, he offered docu-
ments to support his interpretation of the events leading to the
disaster-and to rebut the interpretation given by his boss. Over the
next months Boisjoly was made to feel increasingly alienated from his
coworkers until finally he had to take an extended sick leave. Later,
when he desired to find a new job he found himself confronted with
companies unwilling to take a chance on a known whistleblower.
As the last two cases suggest, there can be double horrors
surrounding whistleblowing: the public horror of lost lives, and the
personal horror of responsible whistleblowers who lose their careers.
Most whistleblowers undergo serious penalties for “committing the
truth.” One recent study suggests that two out of three of them suffer
harassment, lowered performance evaluations, demotions, punitive
transfers, loss of jobs, or blacklisting that can effectively end a career.
Horror stories about whistleblowers are not the exception; they are the
rule.

2. Three Approaches to Whistleblowing Ethics
The literature on whistleblowing is large and growing. Here I mention
three general approaches. The first is to condemn whistleblowers as
disloyal troublemakers who “rat” on their companies and undermine
teamwork based on the hierarchy of authority within the corporation.
Admittedly, whistleblowers’ views about safety concerns are sometimes
correct, but final decisions about safety belong to management, not
engineers. When management errs, the corporation will eventually pick
up the costs in law suits and adverse publicity. Members of the public
are part of the technological enterprise which both benefits them and
exposes them to risks; when things go wrong they (or their surviving
family) can always sue.
I once dismissed this attitude as callous, as sheer corporate egoism
that misconstrues loyalty to a corporation as an absolute (unexcep-
tionless) moral principle. If, however-and it is a big “if’-the public
accepts this attitude, as revealed in how it expresses its will through
legitimate political processes, then so be it. As will become clear later,
I take public responsibilities seriously. If the public refuses to protect
whistleblowers, it tacitly accepts the added risks from not having
available important safety information. I hope the public will protect
the jobs of whistleblowers; more on this later.

A second approach, insightfully defended by Michael Davis, is to
regard whistleblowing as a tragedy to be avoided. On occasion
whistleblowing may be a necessary evil or even admirable, but it is
always bad news all around. It is proof of organizational trouble and
management failure; it threatens the careers of managers on whom the
whistle is blown; it disrupts collegiality by making colleagues feel
resentment toward the whistleblower, and it damages the important
informal network of friends at the workplace; it shows the whistle-
blower lost faith in the organization and its authority, and hence is
more likely to be a troublemaker in the future; and it almost always
brings severe penalties to whistleblowers who are viewed by employers
and colleagues as unfit employees.

I wholeheartedly support efforts to avoid the need for whistle-
blowing. There are many things that can be done to improve organiza
tions to make whistleblowing unnecessary. Top management can-and
must-set a moral tone, and then implement policies that encourage
safety concerns(and other bad news) to be communicated freely.
Specifically, managers can keep doors open, allowing engineers to
convey their concerns without retribution. Corporations can have in-
house ombudspersons and appeal boards, and even a vice-president for
corporate ethics. For their part, engineers can learn to be more
assertive and effective in making their safety concerns known, learning
how to build support from their colleagues. (Could Dan Applegate
have pushed harder than he did, or did he just write a memo and drop
the matter?) Professional societies should explore the possibility of
creating confidential appeal groups where engineers can have their
claims heard.

Nevertheless, this second approach is not enough. There will
always be corporations and managers willing to cut corners on safety
in the pursuit of short-term profit, and there will always be a need for
justified whistleblowing. Labelling whistleblowing as a tragedy to be
avoided whenever possible should not deflect attention from issues
concerning justified whistleblowing.
We need to remind ourselves that responsible whistleblowing is
not bad news all around. It is very good news for the public which is
protected by it. The good news is both episodic and systematic.
Episodically, lives are saved directly when professionals speak out, and
lives are lost when professionals like Dan Applegate feel they must
remain silent in order to keep their jobs. Systematically, lives are saved
indirectly by sending a strong message to industry that legally-
protected whistleblowing is always available as a last resort when
managers too casually override safety concerns for short-term profits.
Helpful pressure is put on management to take a more farsighted view
of safety, thereby providing a further impetus for unifying corporate
self-interest with the production of safe products. (In the DC-10, Pinto,
and Challenger cases, management made shortsighted decisions that
resulted in enormous costs in law suits and damaged company
reputations.)

In this day of (sometimes justified) outcry over excessive
government regulation, we should not forget the symbolic importance
of clear, effective, and enforccd laws as a way for society to express its
collective vision of a good society.8 Laws protecting responsible
whistleblowing express thc community’s resolve to support professionals
who act responsibly for public safety. Those laws are also required if
the public is to meet its responsibilities in the creation of safe
technological products, as I will suggest in a moment.
A third approach is to affirm unequivocally the obligation of
engineers (and other professionals) to whistlcblow in certain circum-
stances, and to treat this obligation as paramount-as overriding all
other considerations, whatever the sacrifice involved in meeting it.
Richard De George gave the classical statement of this view.

External whistleblowing, he argued, is obligatory when five conditions are met
(by an engineer or other corporate employee):
(1) “Serious and considerable harm to the public” is involved;
(2) one reports the harm and expresses moral concern to
one’s immediate superior;
(3) one exhausts other channels within the corporation;
(4) one has available “documented evidence that would con-
vince a reasonable, inl partial observer that one’s
view of the situation is correct”; and
(5) one has “good reasons to believe that by going public the
necessary changes will be brought about” to prevent
the harm.

De George says that whistleblowing is morally pennissible when
conditions 1-3 are met, and is morally ob/igatory when 1-5 are met.
As critics have pointed out, conditions (4) and (5) seem far too
strong. Where serious safety is at stake, there is some obligation to
whistleblow even when there are only grounds for hope (not neces-
sarily beliet) that whistleblowing will significantly im prove matters, and
even when one’s documentation is substantial but less than convincing
to every rational person. Indeed, often whistle-blowing is intended
to prompt authorities to garner otherwise-unavailable evidence through
investigations.

Moreover, having a reasonable degree of documentation is a
requirement even for permissible whistleblowing-Iest one make
insupportable allegations that unjustifiably harm the reputations of
individuals and corporations. So too is having a reasonable hope for
success.

Hence, De George’s sharp separation of requirements for permissibility and
obligation begins to collapse. There may be an obligation to whistIe-
blow when 1-3 are met and the person has some reasonable degree of
documentation and reasonable hope for success in bringing about
necessary changes.

My main criticism of this third approach, however, is more
fundamental. I \vant to call into question the whole attem pt to offer a
general rule that teUs us when whistleblowing is mandatory, tout court.
Final judgments about obligations to whistleblow must be made
contextuaIly, not as a maUer of general rule. And they must take into
account the burdens imposed on whistleblowers.

3. The Moral Relevance of Personal Life to Professional Duty

In my view, there is a strong prima facie obligation to whistleblow
when one has good reason to believe there is a serious moral problem,
has exhausted normal organizational channels (except in emergencies
when time precludes that), has available a reasonable amount of
documentation, and has reasonable hope of solving the problem by
blowing the whistle. Nevertheless, however strong, the obligation is
only prima facie: It can sometimes have exceptions when it conflicts
with other important considerations. Moreover, the considerations
which need to be weighed include not only prima facie obligations to
one’s employer, but also considerations about one’s personal life.
Before they make all-things-considered judgments about whether to
whistleblow, engineers may and should consider their responsibilities
to their family, other personal obligations which depend on having an
income, and their rights to pursue their careers.

Engineers are people, as weIl as professionals. They have personal
obligations to their families, as weIl as sundry other obligations in
personal life which can be met only if they have an inconle. They also
have personal rights to pursue careers. These personal obligations and
rights are moraIones, and they legitimately interact with professional
obligations in ways that sometimes make it permissible for engineers
not to whistleblow, even when they have a prbna facie obligation to do
so. Precisely how these considerations are weighed depends on the
particular situation. And here as elsewhere, we must aIlow room for
morally reasonable people to weigh moral factors differently.
In adopting this contextual approach to balancing personal and
professional obligations, I am being heretical. Few discussions of
whistleblowing take personal considerations seriously, as being morally
significant, rather than a matter of nonmoral, prudential concern for
self-interest. But responsibilities to family and to others outside the
workplace, as weIl as the right to pursue one’s career, are moral
considerations, not just prudential ones. Hence further argument is
needed to dismiss them as irrelevant or always secondary in this
context. I will consider three such arguments.

(i) The Prevent-Hann Argzllnent says that morality requires us to
prevent harm and in doing so to treat others’ interests equally and
impartially with our oWß. This assumption is often associated with
utilitarianism, the view that we should always produce the most good
for the most people. Strictly, at issue here is “negative utilitarianism,”
which says we should always act to minimize total harm, treating
everyone’s interests as equally important with our own. The idea is
that even though engineers and their families must suffer, their
suffering is outweighed by the lives saved through whistleblowing.
Without committing hirnself to utilitarianism, De George uses a
variation of the impartiality requirement to defend his criteria for
obligatory whistleblowing: “It is not implausible to claim both that we
are morally obliged to prevent harm to others at relatively little
expense to ourselves, and that we are morally obliged to prevent great
harm to a great many others, even at considerable expense to
ourselves.

The demand for strict impartiality in ethics has been under
sustained attack during the past two decades, and from many
directions. Without attempting to review all those arguments, I can
indicate how they block any straightforward move from impartiality to
absolute (exceptionless) whistleblowing obligations, thereby under-
mining the Prevent-Harm Argument. One argument is that a universal
requirement of strict impartiality (as opposed to a limited requirement
restricted to certain contexts) is self-demeaning. It undermines our
ability to give our lives meaning through special projects, careers,
and relationships that require the resources which strict impartiality
would demand we give away to others. The general moral right to
autonomy-the right to pursue our lives in a search for meaning and
happiness-implies a right to give considerable emphasis to our
personal needs and those of our family.

As an analogy, consider the life-and-death issues surrounding world
hunger and scarce medical resources. It can be argued that all of us
share a general responsibility (of mutual aid) for dealing with the
tragedy of tens of thousands of people who die each day from malnu-
trition and lack of medical care. As citizens paying taxes that can be
used toward this end, and also as philanthropists who voluntarily
recognize a responsibility to give to relief organizations, each of us has
a prinla facie obligation to help. But there are limits. Right now, you
and I could dramatically lower our lifestyles in order to help save lives
by making greater sacrifices. We could even donate one of our
kidneys to save a life. Yet we have a right not to do that, a right to
give ourselves and our families considerable priority in how we use our
resources. Similarly, engineers’ rights to pursue their meaning-giving
careers, and the projects and relationships made possible by those
careers, have relevance in understanding the degree of sacrifice
required by a prima facie whistleblowing obligation.

(ii) The Avoid-Harm Argument proceeds from the obligation not
to cause harm to others. It then points out that engineers are in a
position to cause or avoid harm on an unusual scale. As a result,
according to Kenneth Alpern, the ordinary moral obligation of due
care in avoiding harm to others implies that engineers must “be ready
to make greater personal sacrifices than can normally be demanded of
other individuals.’,16 In particular, according to Gene James, whistle-
blowing is required when it falls under the general obligation to
“prevent unnecessary harm to others” and “to not cause avoidable harm
to others,” where “harm” means violating their rights. I ?
Of course there is a general obligation not to cause harm. That
obligation, however, is so abstract that it teIls us little about exactly
how much effort and sacrifice is required of us, especially where many
people share responsibility for avoiding harm. I have an obligation not
to harm others by polluting the environment, but it does not follow
that I must stop driving my car at the cost of my job and the
opportunities it makes possible for my family. That would be an unfair
burden. These abstract difficulties multiply as we turn to the context
of engineering practice which involves collective responsibility for
technological products.

Engineers work as members of authority-structured teams which
sometimes involve hundreds of other professionals who share
responsibility for inherently-risky technological projects. 18 Engineers
are not the only team-members who have responsibilities to create safe
products. Their managers have exactly the same general responsi-
bilities. In fact, they have greater accountability insofar as they are
charged with the authority to make final decisions about projects.
True, engineers have greater expertise in safety matters and hence
have greater responsibilities to identify dangers and convey that
information to management. But whatever justifications can be given
for engineers to zealously protect public safety also apply to managers.
In making the decision to launch the Challenger, Jerald Mason, Senior
Vice President for Morton Thiokol, is said to have told Robert Lund,
“Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.”
Surely this change in headgear did not alter his moral responsibilities
for safety.

Dan Applegate and Roger Boisjoly acted responsibly in making
unequivocal safety recommendations; their managers failed to act
responsibly. Hence their moral dilemmas about whether to whistle-
blow arose because of unjustified decisions by their superiors. It is fair
to ask engineers to pick up the moral slack for managers’ irresponsible
decisions-as long as we afford them legal protection to prevent their
being harassed, fired, and blacklisted. Otherwise, we impose an unfair
burden. Government and the general public share responsibility for
safety in engineering. They set the rules that business plays by. It is
hypocrisy for us to insist that engineers have an obligation to
whistleblow to protect us, and then to fail to protect them when they
act on the obligation.

(iii) The Professional-Status Argument asserts that engineers have
special responsibilities as professionals, specified in codes of ethics,
which go beyond the general responsibilities incumbent on everyone to
prevent and avoid harm, and which override all personal consid-
erations. Most engineering codes hint at a whistleblowing obligation
with wording similar to that of the code of the National Society of
Professional Engineers (NSPE):
Engineers shall at all times recognize that their primary obli-
gation is to protect the safety, health, property and welfare
of the public. If their professional judgment is over-ruled
under circumstances where the safety, health, property or
welfare of the public are endangered, they shall notify their
employer or client and such other authority as may be
appropriate.

The phrase lias may be appropriate” is ambiguous. Does it mean “when
morally justified,” or does it mean when necessary in order to protect the
public safety, health, and welfare.” The latter interpretation is the most
common one, and it clearly implies whistleblowing in some situations,
no matter what the personal cost.
I agree that the obligation to protect public safety is an essential
professional obligation that deserves emphasis in engineers’ work. It
is not clear, however, that it is paramount in the technical philosophical
sense of overriding all other professional obligations in all situations.
In any case, I reject the general assumption that codified professional
duties are all that are morally relevant in making whistleblowing
decisions. It is quite true that professional considerations require
setting aside personal interests in many situations. But it is also true
that personal considerations have enormous and legitimate importance
in professional life, such as in choosing careers and areas of
specialization, choosing and changing jobs, and deciding how far to go
in sacrificing family life in pursuing a job and a career.
Spouses have a right to participate in professional decisions such as
those involving whistleblowing.

At the very least, I would be worried
about professionals who do not see the moral importance of consulting
their spouses before deciding to engage in acts of whistleblowing that
will seriously affect them and their children. I would be equally
worried aboutcritics who condemn engineers for failing to whistleblow
without knowing anything about their personal situation.

Where does all this leave us on the issue of engineers’ obligations?
It is clear there is a minimum standard which engineers must meet.
They have strong obligations not to break the law and not to approve
projects which are immoral according to standard practice. They also
have a priJna facie obligation to whistleblow in certain situations. J ust
how strong the whistleblowing responsibility is, all things considered,
remains unclear-as long as there are inadequate legal protections.
What is clear is that whistleblowing responsibilities must be
understood contextually, weighed against personal rights and respon-
sibilities, and assessed in light of the public’s responsibilities to protect
whistleblowers. We must look at each •situation. Sonletimes the
penalties for whistleblowing may not be as great as is usually the case,
perhaps because some protective laws have been passed, and
sometimes family responsibilities and rights to pursue a career may not
be seriously affected. But our all-things-considered judgments about
whistleblowing are not a matter of a general absolute principle that
always overrides every other consideration.

Yes, the public has a right to be warned by whistleblowers of
dangers-assuming the public is willing to bear its responsibility for
passing laws protecting whistleblowers. In order to play their role in
respecting that right, engineers should have a legally-backed right of
conscience to take responsible action in safety maUers beyond the
corporate walls. As legal protections are increased, as has begun to
happen during the past decade,23 then the relative weight of personal
life to professional duty changes. Engineers will be able to whistleblow
more often without the kind of suffering to which they have been
exposed, and thus the prilna facie obligation to whistleblow will be less
frequently overridden by personal responsibilities.

4. Characler, Inlegrity, alld Personal Ideals
Isn’t there a danger that denying the existence of absolute, all-things-
considered, principles for whistleblowers will further discourage
whistleblowing in the public interest? After all, even if we grant my
claims about the moral relevance of personal rights and responsibilities,
there remains the general tendency for self-interest to unduly bias
moral decisions. Until adequate legal protection is secured, won’t this
contextual approach result in fewer whistleblowers who act from a
sense of responsibility? I think not.

If all-things-considered judgments about whistleblowing are not a
matter of general rule, they are still a matter of good moral judgment.
Good judgment takes into account rules whenever they provide helpful
guidance, but essentially it is a product of good character-a character
defined by virtues. Character is a further area in which personal
aspects of morality bear on engineering ethics, and in the space
remaining I want to comment on it.
Virtues are those desirable traits that reveal themselves in all
aspects of personality-in attitudes, emotions, desires, and conduct.
They are not private merit badges. (To view them as such is the
egoistic distortion of self-righteousness. ) Instead, virtues are desir-
able ways of relating to other people, to communities, and to social
practices such as engineering. Which virtues are most important for
engineers to cultivate?

Here are some of the most significant virtues, sorted into three
general categories.
(1) Virtues of self-direction are those which enable us to guide our
Jives. They include the intellectual virtues which characterize technical
expertise: mastery of one’s discipline, ability to communicate, skills in
reasoning, imagination, ability to discern dangers, a disposition to
minimize risk, and humility (understood as a reasonable perspective on
one’s abilities). They also include integrity virtues which promote
coherence among one’s attitudes, commitments, and conduct based on
a core of moral concern. They include honesty, courage, conscien-
tiousness, self-respect, and fidelity to promises and commitments-
those in both personal and professional life. And wisdom is practical
good judgment in making responsible decisions. This good moral
judgment, grounded in the experience of concerned and accountable
engineers, is essential in balancing the aspirations embedded in the
next two sets of virtues.
(2) Teanl-work virtlles include (a) loyalty: concern for the good of
the organization for which one works; (b) collegiality: respect for one’s
colleagues and a commitment to work with them in shared projects;
an-d (c) cooperativeness: the willingness to make reasonable conl-
promises. Reasonable compromises can be integrity-preserving in that
they enable us to meet our responsibilities to maintain relationships in
circumstances where there is moral complexity and disagreement,
factual uncertainty, and the need to maintain ongoing cooperative
activities-exactly the circumstances of engineering practice. 26 U nrea-
sonable compromises are compromising in the pejorative sense: they
betray our moral principles and violate our integrity. Only good
judgment, not general rules, enables engineers to draw a reasonable
line between these two types of compromise.
(3) Public-spirited virtlles are those aimed at the good of others,
both clients and the general public’ affected by one’s work. Justice
virtlles concern fair play. One is respect for persons: the disposition
to respect people’s rights and autonomy, in particular, the rights not to
be injured in ways one does not consent to.
Responsibi/ity for Safety in Engineering
35
Publie-spiritedness ean be shown in different degrees, as ean all
the virtues. This helps us understand the sense of responsibility to
protect the public that often motivates whistleblowers. J ust as profes-
sional ethics has tended to ignore the moral relevanee of personallife
to professional responsibilities, it has tended to think of professional
responsibilities solely in terms of role respollsibilities-those minimal
obligations which all praetitioners take on when they enter a given
profession. While role responsibilities are sufficiently important to
deserve this emphasis, they are not the whole of professional ethics.
There are also ideals which evoke higher aspirations than the minimum
responsibilities. These ideals are important to understanding the
eommitted eonduet of whistleblowers.

Depth of eommitment to the publie good is a familiar theme in
whistleblowers’ aecounts of their ordeals. The depth is manifested in
how they conneet their self-respect and personal integrity to their
eommitments to the good of others. Roger Boisjoly, for example, has
said that if he had it all to do over again he would make the same
deeisions because otherwise he “couldn’t live with any self respeeL,,28
Similarly, Frank Camps says he acted from a sense of personal
integrity.

Boisjoly, Camps, and whistleblowers like them also report that they
aeted from a sense of responsibility. In my view, they probably acted
beyond the minimum standard that all engineers are required to meet,
given the absence of proteetive laws and the severity of the personal
suffering they had to undergo. Does it follow that they are simply
confused about how mueh was required of them? J.O. Urmson onee
suggested that moral heroes who claim to be meeting their duties are
either muddled in their thinking or excessively modest about their
moral zealousness, whieh has carried them beyond the eall of duty.30
Urmson, like most post-Kantian philosophers, assumed that obli-
gations are universal, and henee that there could not be personal
obligations that only eertain individuals have. I hold a different view.31
There is such a thing as voluntarily assuming a responsibility and doing
so because of commitments to (valid) ideals, to a degree beyond what
is required of everyone. Sometimes the eommitment is shown in
career choice and guided by religious ideals: think of Albert Sehweitzer
or Mother Teresa of Caleutta. Sometimes it is shown in professional
life in an unusual degree of pro bono pub/ico work. And sometimes it
is shown in whistleblowing decisions.

According to this line of thought, whistleblowing done at enormous
personal cost, motivated by moral concern for the public good, and
exercising good moral judgment is both (a) supererogatory-beyond
the general call of duty incumbent on everyone, and (b) appropriately
motivated by a sense of responsibility. Such whistleblowers act from
a sense that they must do what they are doing. 32 Failure to act would
constitute a betrayal of the ideal to which they are committed, and also
a betrayal of their integrity as a person committed to that ideal.
Here, then, is a further way in which personal life is relevant to
professionallife. Earlier I drew attention to the inlportance of
personal rights and responsibilities, and to the unfair personal burdens
when others involved in collective enterprises fail to meet their
responsibilities. Equally important, we need to appreciate the role of
personal integrity grounded in supererogatory commitments to ideals.
The topic of being able to live with oneself should not be dismissed as
a vagary of individual psychology. It concerns the ideals to which we
commit ourselves, beyond the minimum standard incumbent on
everyone. This appreciation of personal integrity and commitments to
ideals is compatible with a primary emphasis on laws that make it
possible for professionals to serve the public good without having to
make heroic self-sacrifices.