DQ 8
I N V I T E D C O N T R I B U T I O N
The Responsibility to Lie and the Obligation to Report
Bonhoeffer’s ‘‘What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?’’ And the Ethics of Whistleblowing
Scott R. Paeth
Published online: 23 January 2013
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This article is an examination of the moral
complexity of the act of whistleblowing in the context of
corporate corruption. Whistleblowing may be a morally
admirable act underataken by morally ambiguous agents,
but can only be fully understood in context. Using German
theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay ‘‘What Does It
Mean to Tell the Truth?’’ This essay will examine how the
kind of deception sometimes necessary in whistleblowing
cases can be testimony to a larger and more profound truth.
Keywords Whistleblowing � Jeffrey Wigand � Mark Whitacre � Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Introduction
Whistleblowing is an ethically complex act that involves
several different overlapping understandings of obligation,
honesty, loyalty, and duty. 1
While whistleblowers are
often—with justification—portrayed as being heroic fig-
ures in the news media and popular culture, the decision to
engage in whistleblowing is not an act of pure unvarnished
moral righteousness. Rather, it involves the evaluation of
competing moral claims on one’s identity and action, and a
decision to act in ways that honor one set of moral obli-
gations at the expense of others. That this decision is often
justifiable on the basis of the larger question of the public
interest does not make it any less morally ambiguous from
the point of view of the person undertaking the act. 2
As
Lars Landblom (2007) argues:
The debate on morality whistleblowing centers on the
conflict between the duty of loyalty to the firm or
organization in which one works and the liberty to
speak out against wrongdoing. This is the moral
dilemma of whistleblowing. This dilemma comes
about because we tend to think, like Beauchamp and
Bowie, that ‘‘[e]mployees have both legal and moral
obligations to be loyal to their employers’’ (1988,
p. 262), and simultaneously hold that we should be
free to do our part in stopping immoral or dangerous
practices. (Landblom 2007, p. 415)
Yet, the conflict between loyalty and liberty represents only
one dimension of the larger set of moral conflicts inherent in
the decision to blow the whistle on corrupt corporate
practices. Participation in any organization is constituted by
a whole body of at least prima facie moral obligations,
which are called into question by the whistleblowing act.
Jensen (1987) breaks down the ethical tension points in
whistleblowing into two general categories: Procedural and
substantive (1987, p. 322). Procedural questions relate to
matters such as the seriousness of the potential offense and
the quality of the whistleblower’s information, as well as
such matters as the motives of the whistleblower and the
S. R. Paeth (&) DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA
e-mail: spaeth@depaul.edu
1 One challenge in any discussion of whistleblowing is defining the
term itself. While no definition is perfect, for the purposes of this
paper, I will assume the definition articulated by Jubb (1999):
‘‘Whistleblowing is a deliberate non-obligatory act of disclosure,
which gets onto public record and is made by a person who has or had
privileged access to data or information of an organization, about
non-trivial illegality or other wrongdoing whether actual, suspected or
anticipated which implicates and is under the control of that
organization, to an external entity having potential to rectify the
wrongdoing.’’ 2
For discussion of some of the ethical tensions inherent in the act of
whistleblowing, see Landblom (2007), Jensen (1987), Larmer (1992),
and Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran (2005).
123
J Bus Ethics (2013) 112:559–566
DOI 10.1007/s10551-012-1557-2
timing of the act. Procedural questions may be thought of in
essentially prudential terms—they deal with judgments as
to the effectiveness of the whistleblowing act in a particular
time and place, in light of a particular set of circumstances.
Substantive questions, as Jensen notes, can be consid-
erably more ethically agonizing:
A nurse, for example, agonizes over whether to blow the
whistle on what she feels are seriously inadequate
practices in her health care unit of the hospital. She
realizes an obligation to the patients, to her peers, to her
supervisors, to the medical profession, to the hospital
administration, to her own self-worth, to the general
public, and to ‘‘the truth.’’ How can she balance all of
these loyalties and commitments when they begin to
conflict? Usually they exist together with no problem,
but conditions warranting whistleblowing usually mean
that some of these loyalties are now battling each other.
Which will take precedence in that particular situation?
Where in that mix of loyalties does one’s priority fall?
Which loyalties will have to be sacrificed, or at least set
aside temporarily? (Jensen 1987, p. 324)
Ethical analysis of moral conflicts is often resolved either
by consequentialist appeals to the greatest good, or by
attempts to rank moral obligations according to some
understanding of their relative weight on the moral scale.
As important as such attempts are, however, they tend to
obscure the tragic dimension of moral conflicts. In other
words, by attempting to treat the conflict as a problem
capable of a rationally consistent and universalizable
solution, they fail to give proper attention to what gives
rise to the conflict in the first place—the tension between
two deeply held and subjectively binding sets of obliga-
tions, neither of which can be let go by the agent without
some moral sacrifice. It is not that, in blowing the whistle,
one chooses between an ethical path and an unethical path,
but rather one chooses between two different ethical paths,
both of which one experiences as binding, and in choosing,
one must act unethically according to one of those paths.
In order to analyze the moral questions at stake in the act
of whistleblowing, I will examine two prominent examples
of corporate whistleblowing, with particular attention to the
motivations and decisions of the central actors in those
cases. I will then consider the position articulated by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his essay fragment ‘‘What Does It
Mean to Tell the Truth?’’ in which he examines the con-
textual nature of truth telling and considers the possible
appropriateness of lying under certain circumstances. I will
then extend his argument to consider the question of con-
flicting loyalty in the context of corporate whistleblowing,
finally returning the central question of how it may be
possible to adjudicate between competing moral claims
in situations where corporate corruption and malfeasance
requires moral actions by employees that may violate their
group obligations to the company, and their sense of loy-
alty to their peers.
Whistleblowing: Two Case Studies
I begin with two case studies. These cases have been
widely examined and reported on, and both have been
made into big-budget Hollywood movies, with their pro-
tagonists portrayed by marquee actors. While substantially
different in their details, both cases reveal the moral
complexity involved in the whistleblowing decision.
The first case is that of Jeffrey Wigand, the former
Brown & Williamson tobacco researcher who in 1993 blew
the whistle on the cover-up by the tobacco industry of
research proving the harmfulness of tobacco smoke.
(Brenner 1996) Wigand was widely vilified by the tobacco
industry, and the initial report of his work by 60 Minutes
was quashed by threats of a lawsuit against CBS. 3
How-
ever, when the report was ultimately aired, it provided
devastating evidence that the tobacco industry had known
for decades that its products caused cancer and a raft of
other health effects in smokers. The documents demon-
strated that industry leaders had known this for years, and
yet testified repeatedly, often under oath, to the contrary. In
the wake of Wigand’s revelations, it became impossible for
tobacco companies to claim any longer that their products
were not harmful.
While Wigand’s actions were in many regards admira-
ble, and undertaken at great cost to himself, they were by
no means morally unambiguous, and Wigand himself is a
morally complex figure. As Marie Brenner notes, ‘‘the anti-
tobacco forces depict Jeffrey Wigand as a portrait of
courage, a Marlon Brando taking on the powers in On the
Waterfront. The pro-tobacco lobbies have been equally
vociferous in their campaign to turn Wigand into a demon,
a Mark Fuhrman who could cause potentially devastating
cases against the tobacco industry to dissolve over issues
that have little to do with the dangers of smoking.’’
(Brenner 1996, p. 5) Leaving aside the allegations made
against him by his former employers, who attempted to
paint him as feckless and profoundly dishonest, there are
other questions of group loyalty and obligation that need to
be considered when evaluating the moral implications of
his actions. 4
3 Among the tactics used against Wigand was the production of a 500
page dossier which purported to demonstrate that Wigand was an
unstable and unreliable witness. See Hwang and Geyelin (1996). 4
As regards the allegations made against him by his employers,
Brenner notes that the publicist responsible for the most damaging
allegations was investigated by the Department of Justice on charges
of witness intimidation (Brenner 1996, p. 5).
560 S. R. Paeth
123
Wigand was hired as Head of Research and Develop-
ment by Brown & Williamson Tobacco in 1989, ostensibly
to participate in the development of safer, low-tar ciga-
rettes to compete with other brands on the market. (Brenner
1996, pp. 8–9) He quickly came to realize that the job was
not what he expected. However, the $300,000 salary and
his belief that he was hired to pursue the development of
safer tobacco products kept him in the job for several years.
From the beginning, Wigand recognized that B&W did
not have the personnel or technology in his department to
do the kind of research necessary to produce safer prod-
ucts: ‘‘There was neither a toxicologist nor a physicist on
staff … How, he thought, could you be serious about studying the health aspects of tobacco or fire safety without
the proper experts?’’ (Brenner 1996, p. 9) He was also
being advised by legal experts to avoid, contrary to sci-
entific practice, keeping any notes or documentation that
could prove damaging to the company in litigation, while
lawyers ‘‘sometimes edited scientific information on addi-
tives.’’ (Brenner 1996, p. 9).
Wigand found himself increasingly in conflict with
B&W management over the company’s practices and
agenda. Information to which he should have had access as
head of R&D was withheld from him, including studies
demonstrating the adverse health effects of nicotine.
(Brenner 1996, p. 10) During this time, he began to keep an
extensive diary documenting much of what he had
uncovered about the company’s practices, though when he
was fired in 1993, his diary was never returned. (Brenner
1996, p. 10) As part of his severance package, Wigand
signed a life-long confidentiality agreement that required
him not to discuss Brown & Williamson in any way.
(Brenner 1996, p. 17) When he began to work as a con-
sultant for anti-tobacco groups and journalists attempting
to report on the story, he initially sought to operate within
the terms of the agreement, but eventually was persuaded
by 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman to go on record
about his experiences. 5
There are legitimate questions of whether or not Wigand
and other whistleblowers have any moral obligations to
hold in confidence things that they learn in the context of
corporate deliberations that are intended to be secret. In the
same vein, to what degree is it a violation of his obligation
to his employer to leak documents that are intended to be
understood as work product and thus the property of the
company that owns them? To what degree was Wigand
bound by contractual obligations to maintain confidential-
ity or honor non-disclosure agreements?
One strand of moral reflection on such questions would
answer that, to the extent that Wigand’s actions had the
consequence of exposing the deception of the cigarette
industry, and thus revealing the actual harm that they knew
cigarettes to cause, Wigand’s actions could be morally
justified as producing an overall greater good. 6
Another
strand of thinking would argue that we are not in fact bound
in any circumstances to honor promises that result in harm
to others, even if the act of promising itself is understood to
carry with it a strong conception of moral obligation. 7
The
content of the promise matters, and one cannot be morally
bound to honor a morally objectionable promise.
Then there is a strand of moral thinking that would
argue that Wigand was in fact unconditionally bound by his
promises, irrespective of their consequences. 8
Under this
interpretation, while Wigand may not have been obligated
to continue acting on behalf of Brown & Williamson once
he knew for a fact that they had been engaged in harmful
deception, he was bound by the promises and contracts that
he had undertaken to refuse to disclose that information
which he had promised to keep secret.
There are arguments to be made for each of these posi-
tions. They each take seriously one aspect or another of the
situation in which the whistleblower finds him or herself. A
consequentialist argument would recognize the obligation
that all moral agents have to maximize benefits or reduce
harms when it is within their power to do so. The failure to
take the harm done through our action or inaction into
account would render any moral theory dubious at a mini-
mum. On the other hand, if a consequentialist argument
requires us to disregard our promises, then the very act of
promising is potentially rendered meaningless, as any
promise can be broken at any time if the agents considers
5 Brenner (1996, p. 21) much of the subsequent drama surrounding
the story centered on the controversy within CBS about whether or
not to run the story, given the possibility of lawsuits as well as other
considerations. The details, while fascinating in their own right, are
peripheral to the basic moral question at stake, namely the conflict
between Wigand’s responsibilities as a former employee of B&W and
his obligations to the larger public as a whistleblower. It does bear
noting however that much of Brenner’s piece centers on the hardball
tactics used by Brown & Williamson to silence Wigand, and the role
that those tactics played in his ultimate decision. She summarizes the
perspective of one of her interviewees, Jack Palladino, as follows:
‘‘For Palladino, there is little about Wigand that reminds him of
Edmond Safra, the banker—and the client of Stanley Arkin—he
worked for who was also the victim of a smear. Safra was motivated
by a sense of moral outrage, Palladino tells me, whereas Wigand’s
level of tension is a sign of pure fear’’ (Brenner 1996, p. 31).
6 For a recent discussion of consequentialist moral theory, see
Mendola (2006). 7
For some recent discussions of the ethics of promising, see
Patterson (1992) and Conee (2000). 8
One could argue that promise-making is a foundational example of
an illocutionary act, a performative utterance the declaration of which
brings about a particular state of being. Thus, the act of pledging
loyalty to his employers brought about a set of obligations in Wigand
that would otherwise have not existed. But, existing, such a pledge is
by its nature binding. See Austin (1962).
The Responsibility to Lie and the Obligation to Report 561
123
the reasons sufficiently compelling. But if this is so, in what
sense are we reasonably engaged in the act of promising?
When we consider whistleblowing in the abstract, it is
relatively easy to view the actions of the whistleblower to
be unqualifiedly admirable, as exposing a secret which was
immoral to keep and revealing malfeasance the continuing
concealment of which could cause great harm. But looking
only at that dimension of the question obscures the cross-
hatching pattern of obligations and commitments in which
the whistleblower—as well as those who opt not to blow
the whistle on corporate corruption—are enmeshed.
A more problematic case of whistleblowing is that of
former Archer Daniels Midland executive Mark Whitacre.
While Jeffrey Wigand is a morally complex individual in
his own right, Whitacre raises a very different set of moral
questions. As a whistleblower, he engaged in some genu-
inely admirable actions, yet, in the process of doing so,
systematically lied, not only to his employer on behalf of
the FBI, but also to the FBI as he embezzled from ADM in
order to enrich himself. While he eventually confessed to
his crimes and served time in jail, his actions substantially
undermined the government’s case against ADM.
Between 1992 and 1995, Whitacre worked as a coop-
erating witness in an FBI investigation of ADM, recording
hundreds of hours of conversations between ADM execu-
tives and representatives of rival agricultural companies
from around the world. (Eichenwald 2000) These conver-
sations served as the foundational evidence in a price-fix-
ing case against ADM, revealing that the company had
‘‘organized a scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dol-
lars from its own customers.’’ (Eichenwald 2000, p. 7)
In order to help uncover ADM’s criminal activity, Whitacre
had to engage in a systematic campaign of deception and
subterfuge directed toward his employer and colleagues who
were in many cases also close friends. His cooperation with the
FBI required him to create a false presentation of himself to
those with whom he spent the bulk of most of his days. As
colleagues carried on what they assumed to be private con-
versations, Whitacre was recording it all, even as he partici-
pated, laughed, joked, and told ribald tales along with them. His
entire professional self-display was in this sense a lie. While
pretending to be a colleague and co-conspirator, he was in fact
a double agent, a spy.
There was a sense in which Whitacre seemed to relish the
experience. He frequently volunteered information that the
FBI was not specifically seeking, and took risks beyond
those required of him by the investigation, often to the
immense frustration of his FBI handlers. At the same time,
the enormous stress of the experience took a great toll on
him. His enthusiasm for helping the FBI was counterbal-
anced by moments of panic, while his demeanor at home
became more withdrawn and eccentric. As Kurt Eichenwald
writes:
It wasn’t just his frequent absences anymore, or his
repeated failure to attend family events or just come
home for dinner. Those aspects of his behavior had
almost become accepted in the household as a given.
But now, even when he was home, he wasn’t com-
pletely there. Mark seemed to be drifting through his
family, with the detachment of a commuter waiting
for a train to take him away.
But there was more. Ginger didn’t understand it, but
Mark had just become weird. Over the summer, they
had built horse stables across the street, and Ginger
loved to relax with an occasional ride. But Mark
would disappear to the stables for hours, often not
returning until 2:00 in the morning. Usually he would
come home saying that he had been brushing the
horses. Brushing the horses for three or four hours?
Then, a few hours later, he would head for work. It
just wasn’t normal. He seemed to be getting almost
no sleep. (Eichenwald 2000, p. 254)
Then there was the issue of the embezzling. On August 7,
1995, ADM fired Whitacre, accusing him of having
embezzled more than $2.5 million from the company.
(Henkoff 1995) Whitacre claimed that this money was
compensation that ADM had agreed to pay him. But his
ever-changing story and repeated inconsistencies were
extremely damaging to the government’s case against
ADM. In the end, the company was able to argue
persuasively that Whitacre’s actions amounted to embez-
zlement and money laundering. He eventually pled guilty
to ‘‘charges of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to
defraud the IRS, filing false income tax return, and
interstate transportation of stolen property’’. (U. S. Depart-
ment of Justice 1997) In his plea deal, he admitted to
embezzling as much as $9 million from Archer Daniels
Midland. As Whitacre later explained to Kurt Eichenwald:
Shortly after arriving at the company … he had heard rumors that some executives had engaged in corpo-
rate frauds – yet no one seemed to care. And indeed,
just two years after Whitacre’s arrival at ADM, the
corporate treasurer left the company amidst allega-
tions of financial wrongdoing, yet no criminal action
was ever taken.
Stealing seemed to pose little risk of punishment.
And so, Whitacre stole. ‘‘They’re criminals,’’ he said.
‘‘What are they going to do if they catch me? How
could they risk having a criminal case?’’ … The later multimillion-dollar thefts, he said, only
came about when he believed the investigation was
coming to a close. He feared that the case put his
finances at risk and decided to steal more to protect
himself. (Eichenwald 2000, p. 561)
562 S. R. Paeth
123
This confession sums up much of the paradox of Mark
Whitacre: it is both self-serving and morally self-aware; he
recognizes on the one hand that what he was doing was
illegal, but argues that he was justified because he was
surrounded by a culture of corruption; and he finally
attempts to exculpate himself on the grounds that the
investigation launched as a result of his own revelations to
the FBI so endangered his personal finances that he felt
compelled to go for the big score while he still could. In all
of this, however, it never seems to fully dawn on him how
damaging his actions were to they very moral stand that he
had so courageously taken in the first place—to become a
whistleblower in order to expose a deep morass of
corporate corruption. In the end, knowing where the lies
end and the truth begins is the central challenge in
understanding Mark Whitacre and his motivations.
Whitacre is a fascinating character on several levels. On
the one hand, he approached the FBI voluntarily to inform
them about ADM’s corrupt practices (though only after
having cajoled to do so by his wife), and then assisted the
FBI in gathering information by wearing a wire to a series
of meetings in which their price-fixing scheme was dis-
cussed. Over a period of 3 years he provided the FBI with
hundreds of hours of tape validating the violation of U.S.
law, not only by ADM executives but also by executives of
several other firms. ‘‘With little obvious incentive, Mark
Whitacre secretly recorded colleagues and competitors as
they illegally divided the world markets among themselves,
setting far higher prices for their products than free com-
petition would allow.’’ (Eichenwald 2000, p. 7)
At the same time, he had embezzled more than nine
million dollars himself from ADM, lied extensively to the
FBI in the aftermath of his discovery, engaged in bizarre
behavior, and even went so far as to accuse the FBI of
forcing him to destroy evidence. As a result, Whitacre
wound up being the only subject of the investigation to
spend any actual time in jail.
Whitacre’s case brings up many of the same problems as
the Wigand case, but adds the additional element of
Whitacre’s self-conscious deception of both his employers
and the FBI. Yet, like Wigand and other whistleblowers, he
did expose a significant case of corporate corruption and
criminal activity. To some degree, his more obviously
blame-worthy actions may be mitigated morally by mental
illness and the pressure of working undercover for the FBI,
but it is also possible to morally evaluate and distinguish
between his deception of ADM on the one hand, and his
deception of the FBI on the other, in order to gain a clearer
understanding of what the morally problematic nature of
the latter deception was. In order to aid in this, I will turn
now to the work of the German theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer on Responsibility, Truth Telling, and Lying
In Bonhoeffer’s fragmentary essay ‘‘What Does It Mean to
Tell the Truth?’’ he offers a telling illustration of the nature
of truth telling and deception. Imagine he says, a circum-
stance in which a child is called out by his teacher in front
of his class and asked if his father often comes home drunk
(Bonhoeffer 2006, pp. 601ff.) The child, Bonhoeffer
argues, would lie in order to protect his father, but in doing
so, would actually be telling a larger and more significant
truth, namely that the teacher has exceeded his authority in
asking the question, and violated the sovereign moral
sphere of the family. It is not for the teacher to ask such
questions in such circumstances, and by saying no, the
child affirms, in an inchoate way, the more basic and
fundamental truth of his situation. As Bonhoeffer puts the
matter:
Lies on the part of children and inexperienced per-
sons in general can frequently be traced back to their
being placed in situations that they cannot fully
fathom. For this reason it is questionable whether it
makes sense to generalize and extend the concept of
lying (which is and ought to be understood as
something downright reprehensible) in such a way
that it coincides with the concept of a formally untrue
statement. Indeed, all of this demonstrates how dif-
ficult it is to say what lying really is. (Bonhoeffer
2006, p. 606)
To lie, as Bonhoeffer sees it, is not simply to state
something that is at odds with the way things actually are.
There are circumstances where such statements are wholly
appropriate, and it would be a misunderstanding to refer to
them as a lie in any regard (joke-telling is one example that
he offers). But the reason this is so is because of the
contextual nature of the act of truth telling itself. We
cannot know in advance of a particular untrue statement
whether it is genuinely understood to be a lie, unless we are
also aware of the context and setting in which the statement
is made. There may well be circumstances where deception
is wholly appropriate, particularly in situations where the
deception is necessary in order to expose the violation of
some deeper moral imperative or in opposition to some
grave violation of the properly and divinely ordered
structure of society.
To understand Bonhoeffer’s example of the child and his
teacher, it is important to place Bonhoeffer himself in con-
text, and to grasp properly the situation to which he was
responding. As is well known, Bonhoeffer wrote the bulk of
what remains of his Ethics as well as several fragmentary
pieces such as ‘‘What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?’’
during the Nazi regime while participating in and imprisoned
The Responsibility to Lie and the Obligation to Report 563
123
as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. 9
Under
interrogation, he was asked questions which, if he answered
truthfully, would have not only cost him his own life, but also
endangered the lives of other members of the conspiracy,
including many members of his own family. Therefore, he
was called upon to lie for their protection in the face of
questions asked of him by an illegitimate authority. As
Bonhoeffer’s biographer Eberhard Bethge reports, Bonho-
effer’s reflections on truth telling emerge directly from the
experience of interrogation:
During his interrogations while awaiting trial, Bon-
hoeffer did not have as much to conceal or take
responsibility for as [Hans von] Dohnanyi [Bonho-
effer’s brother-in-law and co-conspirator]. But much
depended on how precisely Bonhoeffer held to the
agreed rules of procedure. The slightest carelessness
or discrepancy in his story could ruin everything; to
have pursued his own course because of his profes-
sion or for reasons of private integrity would have
been a genuine betrayal. … Bonhoeffer had some fears about his physical and
mental sensitivity in the face of possible torture. But
it became clear that the new task brought with it the
required strength. From the first day, he kept himself
physically fit by doing exercises and eating whatever
nourishing food his family and friends sent to his cell.
At no stage in the long struggle did he give up his
conviction that by his endurance he was sharing in a
great cause: ‘‘The thing for which I should be con-
demned is so irreproachable that I may only be proud
of it.’’ … The notes that have been preserved give a fairly exact
picture of what was at stake in this tiny corner of the
resistance’s fight, the way in which Bonhoeffer
defended himself and concealed the real facts of the
conspiracy, what he produced and what he sup-
pressed. His fragmentary essay, ‘‘What Is Mean by
‘Telling the Truth’?’’ emerged during these months,
and the notes reveal something of the true back-
ground of that study. Their confusing content mer-
cilessly shows the consequences of the conspirators’
struggle. The fact that Bonhoeffer wrote his essay in
those weeks shows how much he was aware of his
dilemma, and that he did not seek to pretend or hide
anything from himself. (Bethge 2000, pp. 810–813)
Faced with interrogation and possible torture, weighed down
by the knowledge that to speak the truth to the interrogators
who claimed to have the authority to demand it of him would
condemn both himself and the whole conspiracy, Bonhoeffer
committed himself to a course of action that required him to
deceive his interrogators consciously and deliberately. Like
the child in his example, Bonheoffer’s lies testified to a larger
and more profound truth—that the Nazis did not represent a
legitimate authority and were, therefore, not entitled ques-
tion him, and thus he was not obligated to answer truthfully.
‘‘There is,’’ Bonhoeffer argues, ‘‘such a thing as Satan’s
truth. Its nature is to deny everything real under the guise of
the truth. It feeds on hatred against the real, against he world
created and loved by God.’’ (Bonhoeffer 2006, p. 604)
Genuine truth, on the contrary, argues Bonhoeffer, is a liv-
ing truth, which we come to know through the careful dis-
cernment of God’s will for us in the particular circumstances
in which we find ourselves. The fundamental truth which we
owe is to God, and only through an understanding of God’s
acting and speaking in the midst of the concrete situation can
we ourselves speak the truth appropriate to our context.
As a result, truth, at least for adults, for whom the world is a
complex and multifarious place, is not simple. Rather, Bon-
hoeffer argues it is a matter ‘‘also of accurate perception and of
serious consideration of the real circumstances. The more
diverse the life circumstances of people are, the more
responsibility they have and the more difficult it is ‘to tell the
truth.’’’ (Bonhoeffer 2006, p. 603) Knowing the truth to which
one is accountable requires one to be mercilessly honest with
oneself regarding both one’s responsibilities, and the conse-
quences of one’s actions. For Bonhoeffer, it required partici-
pation in a conspiracy which ultimately took his life, but
which, he was always aware, also jeopardized his soul.
Much the same could be said of the circumstances of
those who engage in acts of whistleblowing. There is no one
simple ‘‘truth’’ to which their actions correspond. Rather,
they discern the larger truth of their responsibility to report
in the context of the total circumstances in which they find
themselves. While from a theological perspective, this is
understood to be a discerning of God’s present action and
command in the midst of the concrete situation, such a
theological point of view may not be apparent even to the
whistleblower him- or herself. Rather, they may simply find
themselves caught up by their responsibility and their obli-
gation to refuse to conceal that which violates the dictates of
morality. Even if we grant the possibility of mixed motives
and personal moral failings on the part of the whistleblowers
themselves, we may still recognize the moral worth of the
act of whistleblowing, as an expansion of the general argu-
ment about truth telling that Bonhoeffer is making here.
The Moral Morass of Whistleblowing
While Bonhoeffer is chiefly concerned in his essay about
the utterance of truthful or deceptive words, it is clear that
he understands moral action in general to be rooted in a
9 The most extensive treatment of Bonhoeffer’s life, theology, and
writing is Bethge (2000).
564 S. R. Paeth
123
similarly contextual approach. 10
He writes in conjunction
with his assertion that ‘‘telling the truth must therefore be
learned’’ that ‘‘since it is the case … that the ethical cannot be detached from reality, the ever-greater capacity to per-
ceive reality is a necessary component of ethical action.’’
(Bonhoeffer 2006, p. 603). This imperative applies not only
to the words we speak, but the other kinds of acts that we
undertake. Some kinds of statements, such as promises, are
themselves forms of action, and much the same can be said
of the signing of contracts and non-disclosure agreements.
But other actions undertaken by whistleblowers, perhaps
even the theft of secret documents, can also be understood
in this moral analysis to be acts of fidelity to a larger
project of truth telling, and which, therefore, should not be
subject to moral opprobrium. To refuse to engage in these
actions would be to take part in a lie that disguises itself as
the truth, and by which we would be damned by our own
sense of righteous obligation. 11
In the case of Jeffrey Wigand, it should be clear that he
would not have been bound, under this analysis, by any
promises he had made or contracts signed, as those
promises and contracts would themselves have been lies,
and his obligation would have been to the larger truth of
which they were in violation. In Bonhoeffer’s under-
standing of what it means to act responsibly, Wigand’s
actions were not only permissible, but obligatory in
opposition to the deception in which the industry itself was
engaged.
Whitacre is, as noted, a more difficult case by far. But
this analysis can allow us to understand that his deception
of ADM was actually an act of truth telling in fidelity to the
larger moral reality to which he was responsible. To lie, to
deceive, to obfuscate, for the purpose of bringing to justice
those who would violate the law and exploit the vulnerable
is an act in conformity with the underlying truth of human
moral obligation. In his doing so, we can ultimately rec-
ognize in Whitacre something admirable.
On the other hand, his deception of the FBI, even
making allowances for the possibility of mental illness, was
a participation in an unjustified and immoral deception. In
embezzling from ADM, even while one can recognize the
company’s culpability, Whitacre was serving no truth, but
only himself, and on that score his deception cannot be
justified and we can recognize in him something worthy of
moral condemnation.
Conclusion
That both that which is morally admirable and that which is
morally reprehensible can dwell simultaneously within the
same individual should to be wholly unsurprising to us,
since we are ultimately mysteries even to ourselves. The
question for us must then become how we can orient
ourselves and conform our actions to that ‘‘real’’ of which
Bonhoeffer wrote, so that we might accurately discern our
responsibility in the midst of our concrete circumstances,
not in the light of abstract moral principles, but through the
calling of that force in whom we live and move and have
our being, and by whose lights we come to recognize the
good for what it truly is.
Doing so does not absolve us of the responsibility for
taking account either of the obligations that we hold as a
result of our loyalty to the institutions in which we par-
ticipate, or the consequences of our silence. On the con-
trary, both of these remain in continual tension with one
another in the midst of our actions. But our decision to act
is a decision to stand on behalf of a reality that obligates us
more fundamentally than the loyalty that we bear to
employers or companies. Acting on that obligation
absolves us from nothing, but rather draws us deeper into
our responsibility for those who would be harmed by our
inaction. In Bonhoeffer’s memorable phrase, ‘‘everyone
who acts responsibly becomes guilty.’’ (Bonhoeffer 2005,
p. 275) To act responsibly requires us to risk the guilt of
our action, and yet to act in the knowledge that the guilt we
assume is done so that others may be protected. 12
The act of whistleblowing is an act of truth telling in
Bonheoffer’s sense precisely to the degree that, in bearing
responsibility for the consequences of those actions
undertaken by the institutions in which we participate,
which pay our wages, and which demand loyalty from us,
we testify to the ‘‘real’’ in a more profound and honest
sense than we would in continuing to remain silent and
10 Thus, in his notes for Ethics, Bonhoeffer writes ‘‘It is better when
the truthful person lies than when the liar speaks the truth.’’ This
expresses well the paradoxical nature of ethical discernment in
morally fraught circumstances. Bonhoeffer argues: ‘‘One sin is not
like another. They have different weights. There are heavier and
lighter sins. Falling away is far more serious than falling down. The
most brilliant virtues of the apostates are as dark as night compared
with the darkest weakness of the faithful.’’ Bonhoeffer (2005, p. 77). 11
This is a point that Bonhoeffer makes in a letter to his co-
conspirators entitled ‘‘An Account of the Turn of the Year
1942–1943: After Ten Years,’’ in which he writes: ‘‘The man of
conscience has no one but himself when resisting the superior might of predicaments that demand a decision. But the dimensions of the
conflict wherein he must make his choices are such that, counseled
and supported by nothing but his very own conscience, he is torn
apart. The innumerable respectable and seductive disguises by which
evil approaches him make his conscience fearful and unsure until he
finally settles for a salved conscience instead of a good conscience,
that is, until he deceives his own conscience in order not to despair.
That a bad conscience my be stronger and more wholesome than a
deceived one is something that the man whose sole support is his
conscience can never comprehend.’’ (Bonhoeffer 2009, p. 39).
12 On this general conception in Bonhoeffer’s thought, see Schliesser
(2008).
The Responsibility to Lie and the Obligation to Report 565
123
evade the responsibility that we bear to those who suffer
for our silence. In this regard, the truth that we tell when
we engage in whistleblowing requires us to make trans-
parent precisely the guilt in which we participated as rep-
resentatives of the institutions to which we belong. Both
Wigand and Whitacre, in different ways, for disparate
reasons, and with different degrees of completeness, rec-
ognized the extent of their responsibility, and were willing
to take on guilt, and suffer the adverse consequences, as a
result of their actions. Neither man can be said to have
acted with pure, unvarnished virtue, and in Whitacre’s case
whatever virtue he did display is severely marred by his
obvious vices. Yet both paid a cost for orienting them-
selves, not toward an abstract principle of obligation that
supported a greater lie, but toward the truth that required
them to both speak, and to bear the consequences of their
words.
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