Fear and Silence
Jennings puts it very well, she says,
"No one wakes up one day and decides, “You know what
would be good? A gigantic fraud! I think I’ll perpetuate a
myth through accounting fraud and make money that way.” Nor
does anyone suddenly wake up and exclaim, “Forgery! Forging
bank documents to show lots of assets. There’s the key to
business success.”
These icons of ethical collapse did not descend into the
depths of misdeeds overnight. Nor did they descend alone.
To be able to forge bank documents, one needs a fairly
large staff and a great many averted eyes. To drain the
corporate treasury for personal use requires many pacts of
silence among staff and even board members.”
It often starts, in our experience, with meeting the
numbers. Surely, we reason, adding one extra name to the
database won't hurt. After all, that little Jameson boy
was registered, and his parents did want him to go
to our program. He would have gone, too, if they hadn't
moved away .... and we start to rationalize it.
On the Spirit Lake Forum on Ethical Questions
Willie Davis, from the Turtle Mountain Band of
Chippewa Indians, has this to say about ethics,
"Guilt seems to be an underlying condition for those of
us who have ethics. I feel as if I have done something
wrong when I have conducted myself dishonestly."
Nothing you can do? As we will discuss in the next section,
by-standers can be crucial. Dr. De Mars, on the same forum,
had this to add,
Willie is right about the value of guilt....I still
remember a situation years ago when a project director
wanted to count everyone that their facility served, even
though their program had specific criteria for who was
eligible, and a lot of people getting services didn't meet
those criteria. ...I ALMOST went along with it. Like all of
the things we discuss in our ethics course, there was just
about every argument we discuss in that course right down
the line. "We all need to get along." No sense arguing with
the project director. "We need to meet the numbers." We
really did need to show a certain number of people
receiving services.... and so on.
Shortly before time to leave, I was almost the last one in
the building, an employee came into my office and asked to
speak with me. She said quietly, "I don't think that is
right, what you and the director talked about in the
meeting today. Maybe if we had to face up to the fact that
we weren't serving all of the people we are supposed to we
would go out and recruit the types of individuals this
program was set up to help. I think we could do it instead
of taking the easy way out."
Like Willie, I felt ashamed of myself that I had been
willing to "go along". ... Even though people are often
afraid to speak up, there was no really bad outcome. I told
the director we had to report the data exactly as it was.
The director shrugged and went along with it and I never
told anyone about the conversation I had had the night
before.
So, although it is possible that an individual who has the
courage to speak up will lose her job, it is also possible
that she will make a change and have no negative effects
whatsoever. What prevents people from speaking up, then?
Fear.
Employees may see an issue, but do not report it for fear
of retribution.