Everyday people make decisions that affect their lives in someway. Should I get the salad or the cheeseburger for lunch? Should I go out to the movies or stay in and watch TV? These simple decisions often happen without serious thought. Why? Because they are not life changing choices. But what happens when the decision is not so easy to make, when it's life changing.
Sometimes a person's conscious greatly affects one's decision making. Especially when the topic of whistle blowing arises. The dictionary defines whistle-blowing as the release of information by a member (or former member) of an organization that is evidence of illegal or immoral conduct in the organization, or conduct in the organization that is not in the public interest.
It is hard to imagine the agony of discovering wrongdoing in your profession. The choice of keeping quiet can put others at risk and your conscious will kick in and spawn guilty feelings. But blowing the whistle could mean professional destruction.
Surprisingly whistle blowing is on the rise. This is thanks to high-profile insiders who have gone public with dirty details of corporate corruption and because of a new law that offers an increase in protection for those who are willing to report suspected violations on the job. .
An example of a high-profile insider whistle blower was James Krutchen of Robbinsdale when he alleged that his former employer, Onvoy Inc. of St. Louis Park, schemed with MCI to cheat AT&T of access fees on long-distance calls. Like most cases, Krutchen's is complicated but it is not known whether his allegations have any credit. But the controversy and turmoil that have surrounded him in the aftermath of his claims will be vast. .
Even thought the process that Krutchen and others go through, people seem compelled to speak up. Whistle blowing is on the rise, according to the Government Accountability Project, which is a 26-year-old nonprofit group that helps whistle blowers in corporations and government.