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Book Nook
The Good, the Bad & the
Difference:
How to Tell Right From Wrong
in Everyday Situations
by Randy Cohen
Doubleday, 2002
ISBN: 0385502737
Hardcover, 256 pages.
Price $16.77
Overall Rating: ** Is it at the
library?
 Whistleblowers:
Broken Lives and Organizational Power
by C. Fred Alford
Cornell University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0801487803
Paperback, 192 pages.
Price $16.95
Overall Rating: ** Is it at the
library?
Not every book that is interesting to read is
worth purchasing. At a time when many of us are
trying to be frugal, it makes sense to be critical
about what to add to a home or office library. A
nonfiction book deserving of purchase should not only
be interesting, but it also should provide useful
knowledge to which one may wish to refer in the
future. Alas, neither of this month’s books
meets both criteria; they prove to be interesting but
not particularly useful. So, dust off your library
card, check out one or both of them, and settle in
for a good read.
Our first book is by Randy Cohen, author of the
popular New York Times Magazine column,
“The Ethicist.” This column is to ethics
what Miss Manners is to etiquette. In The Good,
the Bad & the Difference, he has selected
over 100 of the most interesting questions from his
column along with his answers. They are organized
into chapters on different aspects of life: commerce,
work, civics, society, family, school, and medicine.
Complementing the questions, each chapter includes an
“Ethics Pop Quiz”—four interesting
and provocative questions to stimulate your
thinking—and sections titled “Guest
Ethicist,” “Arguing with The
Ethicist,” and “A Postscript”
(where the writer of the original question responds
to the advice given).
The most interesting (and useful) portions of the
book are the purely expository sections of each
chapter. In these, Cohen talks about the nature of
ethics and discusses the aspects of ethical dilemmas
in different settings. He places ethics within the
larger context of a continuum of right behavior
beginning on a small scale with etiquette,
progressing to ethics, and ending with politics. He
also admits that “Any discussion of ethics will
come down to the values of the writer and how clearly
and persuasively he can articulate those values and
apply them to the particular scenario under
discussion.” (p. 4) For the most part, Cohen
succeeds at this task, answering a wide variety of
questions—from the many variations of “Do
you tell?” which counterpoise minding
one’s own business with the effects of ignoring
wrongdoing, to people who describe “behavior
they almost certainly know is wrong” hoping
that The Ethicist will “endorse their bad
behavior, thereby absolvingthem.” (p.
7)
Cohen does not pull his punches when he answers
the questions presented to him. Unfortunately, he
sometimes fails to follow his own advice that
“Sarcasm is a temptation that those in my line
of work ought to resist.” (p. 160) He
frequently lapses into sarcastic and belittling
responses, such as “Alas, his being an
unpleasant fellow does not justify your being a
thief. Too bad, I admit. We would all feel better if
we had to behave honorably only to people we liked.
But there you are….” (p. 155) I suspect
that this is a holdover from Cohen’s days as a
writer for “Late Night With David
Letterman,” but that really doesn’t
justify a mean-spirited answer—even if the
question sounded something less than serious. This
sarcasm eventually grates on the reader’s
nerves, more so because of the book’s topic of
ethical behavior. Ultimately, this makes the book
somewhat less effective in its message, although more
entertaining.
Among Cohen’s wide-ranging comments, he has
little to say about the ethical phenomenon known as
whistle-blowing—even though the topic has
received quite a bit of press over the past year. He
merely states, “Much as we admire the
whistleblower, we hate the squealer, the rat.”
(p. 7) This echoes the message in our second
book.
Whistleblowers will not be an easy book for
most people to read. Its language is that of
sociology, psychology, and psychiatry; its stories
disturbing; and its message contains little hope.
Yet, this is an important book about making ethical
decisions. It seeks to understand the motivation
behind the whistleblower and how the organization
responds.
Alford talks about what it really means to be a
whistleblower: “In theory, anyone who speaks
out in the name of the public good within the
organization is a whistleblower. In practice, the
whistleblower is defined by the retaliation he or she
receives…. If there is no retaliation, she is
just a responsible employee doing her job to protect
the company’s interest.” (p.
18)
He also discloses the typical nature of the
retaliation, which leaves half to two-thirds of the
whistleblowers without jobs: “The key
organizational strategy is to transform an act of
whistle-blowing from an issue of policy and principle
to an act of private disobedience and psychological
disturbance.” (p. 32)
Whistle-blowing and the subsequent organizational
response is explained using several metaphors,
including:
- A “space-walking astronaut who had cut
his lifeline to the mother ship.” (p.
5)
- A feudal society: “To say that the
whistleblower experiences his or her world as
feudal is to point out that this is how power looks
from the bottom up.” (p. 102)
- The ancient Hebrew ritual of the scapegoat:
“He represents what we all have learned about
the organization but cannot bear to know: that it
will destroy us if we think about what we are doing
and what is happening to us.” (p.
126)
Alford brings together the results from a variety
of research studies to help the reader understand
whistleblower motivation. He concludes that,
“Whistleblowers blow the whistle because they
dread living with a corrupted self more than they
dread isolation from others. It is as simple and
complicated as that.” (p. 90) It is an
inability or an unwillingness to
“double”—to have a “work
self” and a “family self” that
embrace conflicting values.
As for the organization’s need to retaliate,
he says, “The whistleblower is so threatening
because he or she brings the values of the home and
church—the larger world—into the
organization.” (p. 130)
The message from this short book probably will
remain in your thoughts long after the book has been
returned to the library. It asks us to confront our
own behavior and ask, “Could I do that? Would I
do that? Or, would I side with the organization,
instead?”
 CHRISTINE ROBINSON has more
than 25 years of leadership experience in quality
systems for the process industries. She has a
master’s degree in quality, values, and
leadership from Marian College. An avid reader, she
spends a significant amount of her time with her nose
in books and her body at the library.
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