Essay On Whistleblowing

Intro:

Is it ethical for accountants to perform the act of whistleblowing? This ethical issue has been debated since the 1970s although back then, you would be referred as a “snitch” or an “informer” if you were a whistleblower. There are two main parties involved in this practice, the employer which can include top management of a company and the whistleblower which in our case is an accountant. Before I go any further, I need to explain what whistleblowing is, in the business industry; Being a whistleblower requires you to call attention to any wrongdoing that occurs within an organization, that includes any violations of the “public interest” such as the falsification of documents shown to investors. Some would argue that by whistleblowing,

In addition, whistleblowers mainly want to expose this issue because they want to increase shareholder’s confidence in the company; Reduce risk; Prevent lawsuits and incidents that may affect the public. (Stanford) All these are prime examples of why this divisive ethical practice is widely accepted and recognized in the business world however many believe that sometimes this can be put out of proportion, what I mean by that is, that not anyone can come up with sufficient evidence and the antithesis to that would be that the company may suffer from confidence and financial loss from the public because of some allegations and even after proving the public wrong, they would still suffer in the stock market and this can be detrimental. (Lombardo). What would utilitarian theorists say about this argument? Well, they would take the side of the whistleblower, for sure, because they believe in the happiness of the majority as opposed of the minority affected and because Jeremy Bentham, founder of utilitarianism, believes more in quantity of happiness which in that case applies to our situation. In that sense, the whistleblower is preventing harm to the public by exposing the threat to them

The answer is quite complex, because some would argue that it is a lengthy process just to get to the bottom of these allegations since both parties could and would probably sue each other, it’s expensive as well. As mentioned above, the whistleblower in question can have his reputation ruined if these allegations turned out to be false or even worse he may cause publicity and this can result in the layoff of workers in the company as well as him not having a job in the future so at the end, it will all be a mess with both sides losing. This may sound like an argument that is deemed intimating but people are still willing to try and success into making a better environment for future employees and even with laws and procedures in place, whistleblowers, especially in the US are being treated poorly because who would want to be “disloyal” and “irresponsible” at a company especially multinational ones and this causes a confusion for upcoming whistleblowers to decide whether it’s worth it or not. (Ettorre) In terms of Kantian theorists, they suggest that people would act in harmony with all the universally accepted rules such as telling the truth which is