It’s a gut-wrenching dilemma: you can report the transgression to your manager, or you can stay true to your friend and keep your lips zipped. Which path is considered morally just?
There are no easy answers here. “The classic view from ethics research is that being loyal and being ethical go hand in hand,” says Ike Silver, assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School. But according to new research, whistleblowers must choose “between being seen as a loyal friend and being seen as a morally developed member of the community,” he says — both worthy goals.
Silver’s new research digs into these difficult ethical trade-offs. For the recent paper “Moral Paragons, but Crummy Friends: The Case of Snitching,” Silver and his colleagues, Zachariah Berry of Cornell University (a doctoral student who led the project) and Alex Shaw of the University of Chicago, conducted a series of studies to determine how people perceive those who betray their colleagues.
Their findings offer a nuanced look at how whistleblowing is handled in the workplace. In the studies, actors were seen as more ethical—and better leaders—if they turned in co-workers guilty of unethical transgressions like stealing, regardless of whether the person was a friend or just an acquaintance. Employees who stayed mum were seen as less ethical, despite the fact that they seemed much more loyal. Interestingly, whistleblowers were also found to be more likely to be hired. The act of reporting a colleague—even a close friend—for wrongdoing signaled that the whistleblower would make a good employee, the study found.
There are caveats. For example, if the whistleblower had an ulterior motive (such as disliking the offending colleague), they were not considered particularly ethical because their actions could be attributed to personal animosity. Also, if the transgression resulted from incompetence rather than deviance, the whistleblower accrued fewer ethics points—that is, there were no benefits to disclosing a colleague’s professional shortcomings.
Immoral drunkards or upright chumps?
Silver and his colleagues weren’t sure exactly what they’d find when they started the research. Both honesty and loyalty are important and widespread values, and loyalty to friends and close others is highly valued.
For this reason, they had two competing cases. The “Immoral Snitch” hypothesis, as it was called, predicted that snitching on friends would be viewed negatively, particularly compared to snitching on acquaintances. After all, being loyal to friends means protecting them. In contrast, the Upstanding Snitch case suggested that people may take credit for blowing the whistle, regardless of their relationship to the wrongdoer. In other words, people may believe that exposing bad behavior is the right thing to do, even—and perhaps especially—when it means calling friends.
The researchers conducted six studies to test these competing theories and delve into the nuances of how whistleblowers are perceived.
In an online experiment, 200 participants were presented with written scenarios about workplace violations and the actions of witnesses who learned of them.
One such vignette describes two employees at a large technology company. While at a conference together, one of the employees confides that he was stealing computer code from another coder. The authors randomly presented participants with one of four versions of this scenario, which differed in whether the witness turned on the offender and whether the two employees were close friends or just acquaintances.
After reading the scenarios, people were asked to rate how morally the witness acted, how faithful he was in turning in (or not turning in) a friend or acquaintance, and whether he would make a good leader.
The results supported the “Upstanding Snitch” hypothesis: the witness who snitched was judged to be significantly more ethical than the one who did not. He was also considered as a better leader. Importantly, capturing a friend was no less moral than contacting an acquaintance (even though it involved far greater infidelity). To viewers, then, the right thing to do is report wrongdoing when it occurs — no matter how close you are to the offender, the results showed.
The type of violation and the motivations for reporting it matter
A later study concluded that the type of violation mattered in how a whistleblower’s ethics were perceived. Participants were again presented with scenarios in which someone decided to tell or keep mum about an employee who was either a friend or an acquaintance. But half of the respondents said the witness learned about a colleague’s unethical behavior (eg, stealing computer code), while the other half learned about incompetent behavior (eg, being a bad coder).
Among participants who read about unethical behavior, reporting the matter to management was again seen as the most ethical option, whether the offender was a friend or an acquaintance.
But the participants did not see the reports of impotence in the same light. Witnesses who told their boss that their colleague was a bad coder were not rated more or less ethical than those who did not, and these ethical ratings did not differ whether the witness was a friend or an acquaintance.
The results suggest that while bringing unethical behavior to light is considered the right thing to do, speaking up about a colleague’s poor performance does not earn you points.
“If what you’re doing is hiding your friend’s immoral behavior, then people think you’re doing something wrong,” says Silver. “If you hide your friend’s incompetent behavior, it seems to be okay.”
To examine the effects of self-interest in racism scenarios, the researchers created another study that included ulterior motives for stealing.
Again they presented scenes in which someone decided to report or not to report an offender, but this time the offenders were either work friends or Disliked colleagues. When people were told about the adversaries, participants were asked whether they were acting out of genuine moral concern or simply wanting to hurt someone they didn’t like. With ulterior motives at play, blowing the whistle was not morally preferable to silence.
The team also conducted an experiment with one hundred human resources students from Cornell University, people who are likely to handle the consequences of bad behavior in the workplace in the future. Participants again learned about an employee who either did or did not engage in the unethical behavior of a friend. But this time, the researchers added questions designed to assess whether these future HR professionals view noses as desirable employees. They did, the results showed: whistleblowers were seen as both more ethical and more employable.
Understanding the whistleblower dilemma
The results of these studies have implications for workers who find themselves in these harsh situations. The study did not consider the possibility of retaliation by the perpetrator or the organization itself (or what might happen if one of these parties disputes the facts). But it does suggest that, in general, outside observers—and perhaps your next HR team—value fairness over loyalty and often praise those who show up.
The study also has implications for employers seeking to build a fair and honest workplace culture.
“Organizations often want to instill loyalty in their employees and use phrases like, ‘We’re all family here,'” says Silver. “Such language can have the unintended consequence of shifting people to place more weight on loyalty when considering whether or not to expose misconduct.”
The authors also noted that perhaps we should all be more empathetic towards whistleblowers.
“Sometimes you hear things like, ‘Oh, they should have come forward,'” says Silver, when in reality the choice they face is daunting, and the decision to come forward at all has complicated reputational implications.
“Witnesses don’t usually choose to be informed about the bad behavior of others, do they?” He says. “Sometimes, you just witness something and now all of a sudden, you’re in this reputation-swapping trap.”
So consider showing the much-maligned villain some kindness, Silver says: “This research suggests that we might want to understand a little bit more about the conflict whistleblowers face when they’re put in these situations.”
