Daniel Coney, based in Lakewood, Colorado, has been a law enforcement professional for more than 36 years, with the last 29 years being both an agent and supervisor in four different Office of Inspector General organizations.
In the world of ethics, we often consider certain values as the underpinnings that drive what is and isn’t ethical. What happens, though, when conflicting values seem to create a conundrum? That question recently piqued my interest during a classroom exercise involving the question of what creates conflict with respect to public servants engaging the public. In the classic book, How Good People Make Tough Choices,[1] the late ethics professor Rushworth Kidder presents two types of moral or political decisions: “wrong v. right” and “right v. right.” It is the latter to which we shift, as most of our ethical dilemmas involve riding the horns of what are ostensibly good and proper decisions. Right v. right decisions involve deeply held values, none of which are morally wrong but that are juxtaposed without any apparent way to harmonize both—or in some cases, all—positions.
Kidder identifies four primary manifestations of these “right” decisions. Briefly, there are (i) justice v. mercy, in which fairness, equity, and consistent application of the law conflict with compassion, empathy, and love; (ii) short-term v. long-term time horizons, which reflect the tension between present and future goals and perspectives; and (iii) individual v. community needs, or what may be seen as “us v. them” or “a majority need v. a minority need.”
It is the fourth problem where we’ll linger: (iv) truth vs. loyalty. In this conflict, Kidder indicates the interest of honesty and integrity wars with promise keeping or commitment. It is often framed as the dilemma between telling the truth or staying loyal to a person. For instance, an example would involve your boss telling you about upcoming layoffs, which includes your best friend, but asks you to keep it to yourself. Do you stay loyal to your boss, or, if the friend asks you, do you tell the truth? With that, let’s take time to parse this.
A false dichotomy
Conflicts in concurrent loyalties make it impossible to serve two masters. The failure to observe one call to loyalty does not require a verdict of disloyalty when observing a second loyalty. Nor does a call to loyalty for foul purposes make a loyalty claim legitimate. Unlike the difference between truth and untruth, which are mutually exclusive principles, loyalty is not nearly so neat. Disloyalty and loyalty are not necessarily contradictory ideas, for I can be loyal to one principle, or simply not exercise loyalty, without being disloyal in the whole. With truth, even half-truths amount to untruths in the whole; it is all or nothing with truth. Of course, this is not to discount that alternative perspectives could lead to differing conclusions. We who work in government understand that public engagement involves engaging with these different understandings from varying interest groups. Negotiation and compromise concerning a public dispute, however, are different than truth.
Second, this particular example is a false dilemma for several reasons. This is a loyalty dilemma, not a truth one—it is really a question of loyalty to a friend or loyalty to a job or boss. There is a number of factors that blunt this question: Did your boss ask for a commitment of silence prior to spilling the beans? If not, you are under no obligation to stay silent. If the boss did ask you prior to releasing the information, then you have voluntarily bound yourself to an oath, which is really a question of truth, not loyalty.
If your boss told you without getting a prior commitment, and then subsequently ordered you to keep it to yourself, loyalty is replaced by obedience to a superior, which eventually becomes a truth proposition if you are put on the spot about whether you revealed the fact. Then there are questions surrounding why you have been asked to keep it secret. Secrets have a way of hiding misconduct rather than serving a noble purpose that advances ethical goals of an organization. It is likely that there will be overriding issues that topple secret agendas that masquerade as loyalty claims.
Loyalty v. truth
In my experience working with all kinds of ethical violations, I have consistently found that loyalty is one of the greatest enemies of truth. I can’t count the number of times misplaced loyalty has resulted in a travesty of justice: sexual harassment and assaults go unpunished because people stay silent, unjust treatments of other humans flourish in an environment of secrecy, and relationships are torn asunder. One need not go far into history to remember the #MeToo movement. As a police officer, I’ve seen a parent’s loyalty result in the perennial fruits of a child gone astray. That lack of oversight and outside restraint only served to further the death spiral their kid was already in. In the workplace, loyalty is often self-serving; it seeks the safety of the shadows, the hope of self-advancement as a result, and the turning of a blind eye to inequities that plague our workplaces and communities.
Answer this: Would loyalty to a friend mean you wouldn’t confront them about their adulterous wanderings? Consider the damage loyalty would cause that truth could avert—and it doesn’t have to be truth involving the spouse. It probably should be aimed at being the kind of friend that won’t allow friends to destroy themselves. You see how loyalty to your friend and truth align perfectly?
No doubt loyalty’s slogan is, “My guy (or gal), no matter what.” It is the idea that whether right or wrong, you’ll always support the position of the subject of your loyalty. Nowhere in this concept of loyalty is there the capacity to judge aright. To come to a differing conclusion is tantamount to treason, so fair and reasoned judgment is never exercised by those who value loyalty over truth. When reason is vacated, loyalty becomes about “an emotional attachment and an emotional reaction to its objects.”[2] Robert Ewin posits that loyalty must be controlled, for “excessive loyalty, or loyalty to the wrong sort of object or on the wrong sort of ground can lead to trouble.” Loyalty is the trademark of the Third Reich, of Jim Jones’ religious cult, and despotic regimes like North Korea.
In short, I’d argue that these are not opposing virtues, but in most cases, it turns into a right v. wrong decision, with loyalty falling on the wrong side of the equation. Of course, this assumes loyalty’s object is most often a person. When loyalty is in an idea or an institution (and that institution is the embodiment of certain ideas), then loyalty is a wonderful tool to create and encourage ethical behavior. Ewin’s argument here is the grounds of loyalty as all-important. That kind of loyalty will “not cover up for inefficiency, incompetence, or corruption on the parts of other members” of the institution. The grand idea of freedom with checks and balances prompted our founders to write The Federalist Papers to explain the benefits of our republic. The clarion call of President Kennedy to “ask not what your country can do for me, ask what you can do for your country” was the idea that animates my every day. Those calls to serve a greater good, to reach for the stars—that is the kind of loyalty that creates good in the world, not because we avert our gaze from the warts and problems we face, but because when we truthfully confront them, only then can we solve them.
One of the slogans from the class I attended was “Ethical fitness is like physical fitness: It doesn’t just happen.” When truth is prioritized and loyalty is subservient to truth, we are doing mental push-ups. We have to face difficult questions. Through intellectual, truthful discourse, we sharpen each other’s ability to reason through the ethical dilemmas thrown our way, and we do it together, no matter what political or moral pursuits we may come from. After all, as Americans we are called to a higher, more ethical standard, and there are few standards higher than accurate, factual, complete, and sound truths.
The views and opinions presented in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer, the inspector general community, or federal law enforcement as a whole.
