5.1 Gray matters for the hughes aircraft case  (Page 8/14)

Ethical dissent

1. Establish a clear technical foundation.
2. Keep your arguments on a high professional plane, as impersonal and objective as possible, avoiding extraneous issues and emotional outbursts.
3. Try to catch problems early, and keep the argument at the lowest managerial level possible.
4. Before going out on a limb, make sure that the issue is sufficiently important.
5. Use (and help establish) organizational dispute resolution mechanisms.
6. Keep records and collect paper.
7. These items originate with the IEEE which has dropped them from their website. They can be accessed through the link above with the Online Ethics Center; the list there is more complete. The above is quoted from the Computing Cases website: http://computingcases.org/case_materials/hughes/support_docs/whistleblowing/ethical_dissent.html.

Before going public

1. Make sure of your motivation.
2. Count your costs.
3. Obtain all the necessary background materials and evidence.
4. Organize to protect your own interests.
5. Choose the right avenue for your disclosure.
6. Make your disclosure in the right spirit.
7. These items come from the IEEE (see onlineethics link) and from the manuscript of Good Computing by Chuck Huff, William Frey, and Jose Cruz.

Places to go

1. Government Agencies
2. Judicial Systems
3. Legislators
4. Advocacy Groups
5. News Media
6. In Puerto Rico, laws 14 and 426 have been passed to protect those who would blow the whistle on government corruption. The Oficina de Etica Gubernamental de Puerto Rico has a whistle blower's hotline. See link above.

When to blow the whistle.

1. Serious and Considerable Harm
2. Notification of immediate supervisor.
3. Exhaustion of internal channels of communication/appeal.
4. Documented Evidence.
5. Likelihood of successful resolution.
6. When the first three conditions are satisfied, whistle-blowing is morally permissible . (You may do it but you are not required or obligated to do it.) This is because you have brought your concerns before decision-makers, given them a chance to respond, and, in the face of their unwillingness to do so, still find the issue of great importance.
7. When all five conditions are satisfied, then whistle-blowing becomes morally obligatory . In this case, you have a moral duty to blow the whistle. Here, your duty is grounded in your responsibility to inform those who are likely to be harmed by the wrongdoing.

References

1. Richard T. De George, "Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers in Large Organizations: The Pinto Case," in Ethical Issues in Engineering , ed. Deborah G. Johnson (1991) New Jersey: Prentice-Hall: 175-186.
2. Carolyn Whitbeck (1998) Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. U.K. Cambridge University Press: 55-72 and 176-181.
3. Charles Harris, Michael Pritchard and Michael Rabins (2005) Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, 3rd Ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth: 203-206.

Hughes dramatic rehearsals

A note on dramatic rehearsals

• The notion of dramatic rehearsal comes from John Dewey's Human Nature and Moral Conduct . An agent works through a solution alternative in the imagination before executing it in the real world. The dramatic rehearsal tests the idea in a mental laboratory created by the moral imagination. Steven Fesmire in his book, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Indiana University Press, 2003), provides a comprehensive interpretation of Dewey's suggestive idea.
• The scenarios portrayed below reflect events in the case but some changes have been made to create six focused decision points. For a more accurate portrayal of the case events, see Computing Cases (computingcases.org)