Corporate whistleblowing is the act of an employee or insider reporting unethical, illegal, or harmful practices within an organisation to authorities, regulators, the media, or the public. Kantian Ethics and Utilitarianism have very different approaches to if and when to blow the whistle. While Kantian Ethics follows a sense of duty and therefore often forbids blowing the whistle, because corporate whistleblowers are breaking promises made to their employer through their contract of employment not to reveal sensitive information that might harm the business,  Utilitarianism is concerned about the greatest happiness for the greatest number and therefore often supports whistleblowing, because it forces companies to behave more ethically. In this way, Utilitarianism is more useful than Kantian Ethics when it comes to deciding whether to blow the whistle.

Firstly, the word “useful” refers to utility or the total amount of happiness produced by a decision. Because utilitarianism aims to maximise happiness in any given situation, determining whether or not to blow the whistle based on whether this would be “useful” or not, self-evidently U is the most useful approach. By contrast KE focuses on duties, so might encourage people not to blow the whistle even when this would maximise happiness, because they would also break a contract. For Kant, negative duties e.g. not to break a promise, always outweigh positive duties e.g. to help people. For example, in the case of Sherron Watkins, the vice president of Enron, who had raised concerns about the company’s accounting irregularities before senior management, it would have been unjustified not to raise suspicions because of the sense of duty KE dictates. Utilitarianism is about predicting consequences and then weighing up your options. Watkins rightly predicted that if Enron continued with its use of off-the-books entities to hide debt, the business would eventually collapse, which it did. From a utilitarian point of view, she did exactly the right thing. Morally most people would agree that she did great, as she was named Time’s Person of the year in 2002. Kantian Ethics seems to hold back on its praise, though. Since she only reported the issue internally, she might be okay even on Kantian ethical grounds, but KE’s strong sense of responsibility when it comes to contracts and promises makes it difficult to justify whistleblowing in many cases. Therefore, Utilitarianism is more useful than Kantian Ethics when it comes to deciding whether to blow the whistle.

Moreover, Kantian Ethics is not always clear on when it would support blowing the whistle. While supporters of Kantian Business Ethics like Norman E. Bowie tend to focus on Kant’s love for rules and duty, and praise it for its adherence for them, critics like Dennis G Arnold, Jeffrey Moriarty and Matthew C Altman question whether this application does justice to the true complexity of Kant’s thought. Kant prizes autonomy, which suggests that it would be difficult for a Kantian to sign a contract of employment at all, since they would promise to obey orders in return for money. In the case of Richard Roll, who testified in the inquiries on the British post office scandal, his whistleblowing seems to have been come from not wanting to deceive the media, which generally supports honesty. He had already left Fujitsu, which means that his secrecy contract was partially outbound. It seems though like Kantian Ethics would still struggle to support his actions because agreeing to whistleblowing would, by application of the categorical imperative, mean promoting people to break promises and since its generally considered to be wrong it cannot ever be right, not in any special situation. However, some Kantians argue that their ethics support whistleblowing when it stems from a duty to uphold truth and justice, even if it leads to personal or professional risk. Their argumentation though, while sound, seems to only make the discussion whether KE supports whistleblowing or not more arbitrary. In this way, Kantian Ethics does not offer clear guidance on issues such as whistleblowing.

Lastly, Utilitarianism can sometimes be impractical, because of the problem of prediction, but whistleblowing on principle still follows the principle of utility. For example, Paul Moore, who, before the 2008 financial crisis, as Head of Group Regulatory at HBOS warned that the bank’s aggressive sales culture was driving irresponsible lending practices. His whistleblowing didn’t stop the financial crisis from happening, he lost his job and although he later received a settlement of more than £500,000, he never worked in banking again. On first view, utilitarianism doesn’t support this. The suffering was greater than the happiness caused. In fact, expect for the consolation prize for Moore, nothing good really came out of it, but considerably, utilitarianism isn’t only concerned about short term utility. There are many utilitarians that enforce inherent values or higher pleasures in their utilitarian system, even if they cause short term suffering. A well-known example of this is John Stuart Mill, who often stressed that education is a higher pleasure. The general good that comes of it, is more important than the short-term discomfort of students, who have to study. Like this, whistleblowing supports honesty and justice, which are inherent values that many people argue for as being sound. The problem of prediction is negligible in the case of whistleblowing, as rule utilitarianism would support it even if it didn’t have immediate beneficial effects. One might argue that this line of argumentation then is really close to KE. It definitely highlights the strengths of KE, that Bowie maintains, but Kant seemed not have Business Ethics in mind when he argued for his system. In this way, all the Kantian Business Ethics approaches result from other scholar trying to apply Kant’s principles, which, although well thought, largely differ in the case of whistleblowing, like was mentioned earlier. Therefore, Utilitarianism is more useful than Kantian Ethics when it comes to deciding whether to blow the whistle.

In conclusion, utilitarianism, more precisely rule utilitarianism, is more useful than Kantian Ethics when it comes to deciding whether to blow the whistle. Whistleblowing supports values like honesty and transparency, which stem from the principle of utility. Therefore, rule utilitarianism is the best approach because it automatically supports whistleblowers in their attempt to make the world a better place and might lead to more legal protections for those employees in the future.