Question

This topic will cover the ethical debate that occurs within the practice of whistle blowing and the sometimes contrasting virtue/ value of loyalty. Therefore, imagine that you and your wife or husband own a company with twenty employees who employ their son and daughter as book keepers. It comes to your attention after a significant financial loss that your children made one honest mistake, non malicious/nor greedy mistake, in their book keeping practices recently that unfortunately cost the company a good deal of money. {PLEASE DO NOT QUESTION WHETHER OR NOT THE MISTAKE WAS A HONEST ONE OR NOT--IT WAS!) No employees had to be fired but it was a significant loss for the company that set it back a bit. Thus, you are confronted with the following moral issue/ dilemma within the realm of business----[Side A: Tell your employees of this honest mistake made by your children and blow the whistle on them as your employees would like to know of this mistake so they can decide if they would like to stay with the company or not, voice their opinion in the matter, etc.; Side B: Don't tell your employees of this honest mistake made by your children because your children admitted to you in full when confronted that it was a one time honest mistake that they will never do again upon which they promised you and your wife or husband that they will check the books more thoroughly from now on.] For this topic you are to discuss the ethical dimensions that surround this issue/dilemma and philosophically/ethically defend both sides of the topic fairly. NOTE: {I am aware of the Soles reading in our text in which Soles argues that it isn't completely accurate to set up a dichotomy between the practice of whistle blowing and the virtue/value of loyalty, i.e. he argues that they are not mutually exclusive. But it does happen in a number of cases where these two things are dichotomous and so let's just imagine for the sake of philosophical/ ethical debate that they are contrasting as depicted in this case!}

Answer 1

Ethically one should tell employees of this honest mistake and leave the decision on them whether to continue working with firm or not.

• This is because if we hide the mistake from them then it would later on create issues when employees came to know about the financial issues as well as mistake of owner's children.
• Secondly, since employees would be well aware of the company's financial loss therefore they will not demand any extra money in form of bonus or increment for next few days.
• Thirdly it will give them a space for thinking that owner have honesty and courage to admit its own mistake creating a better image of owner in their eyes.

Side B could be defended ethically as follows:

• If owner tells employees about his children mistakes today then if employees child make a mistake in future then owner would not be in a position to take any harsh action against that employees child.
• Telling about the mistake may lead to further arguments in employees making them leave the firm. If this happens it would add to further loss to the firm and hiring new employees will add to other loss as hiring needs costing.
• This could agitate employees to go on strike thus may not be a feasible decision.
• It could spread bad word of mouth in public destroying company's image.