Time Magazine Names Whistle-blowers Persons of the Year for 2002

03 January 2003---The year just past slides into the annals of history soiled by headline-grabbing ethics scandals spurred by exceptionally few but notoriously self-serving executives.

Some honest individuals observed their associates' impropriety first-hand and thus faced the gut-wrenching, anguish-laden dilemma of deciding whether to passively ignore uncomfortable circumstances, quietly go along with them, or boldly stand up and cry "Foul!"

Three courageous --- and notably unassuming --- individuals have lessons to teach us from their example of standing up quietly, without personal aggrandizement and against self-interest, to point out, from below the top perch of power, the failures and slimy dealings of their colleagues.

For taking "huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI," Time magazine recently named Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins its Persons of the Year.

Watkins, Rowley and Cooper became public figures not because they tattled to the tabloids but, as Time points out, "only because their memos were leaked."

In sticking their necks out, the magazine notes, these three women, "pretty much put everything in their lives on the line. Their jobs, their health, their privacy, their sanity—they risked all of them to bring us badly needed word of trouble inside crucial institutions".

Read the complete Time article here.

For help in orienting your own ethical compass on the job and under pressure, see our article on how to make ethical choices here.

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