I like when large companies are looking out for the greater good. If we can’t trust the biggest companies around, then we have problems in many areas of our lives. Whether we are trusting security, environmental awareness, or general company practices, it is very important for all companies, and especially large example setting companies to be honest and good. I do not have any information about the Boeing case other than the three articles provided, so I look forward to discussing in class and getting a better understanding of the situation. From my understanding, Boeing did not have a secure enough system for reporting their financials to their shareholders which became an issue when the Sarbanes-Oxley Act created laws against computer security weaknesses. Employees were pressured to continue to accept faulty computer security. They were aware of the audits going on around them. They were aware that Deloitte was not even using boeing’s internal systems because they seemed faulty. If I were an employee there I would have felt very uncomfortable. It is hard for me to say that I would have been uncomfortable enough to step forward and say something because it is unclear whether boeing ended up righting its wrongs or not. It seems like the new restrictions were hard for boeing to follow because of years of doing things their own way, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t need to comply by these standards and create a successful new process for proving their security. It sounds like working at the company during this time would have been extremely frustrating. The law inadvertently kept employees from being able to focus on their own jobs. The auditors did not want to be in a position where they had to disclose any problems as “material weaknesses” but it was unclear whether or not any of the employees or auditors had gone too far in allowing fixes rather than exposing what issues had been there. Reading responses from both sides of the process makes it even more difficult to make a decision about whether the whistleblower was right. I am inclined to be trustworthy of companies and I think that although boeing might have been shaky in the process, they were trying to fix their systems and show that they were not manipulating any shareholders. Even though Deloitte was not using their own systems, they were unable to find those “material weaknesses” and must have found that they were not in fact manipulating any information that was going to stock holders.
Honestly, I am not sure that I can form a strong opinion for or against these specific whistleblowers. I have to imagine that anyone who is losing their job in an attempt to do what is right must believe that they are in fact doing what is right. These two individuals had to have felt very strongly about the information they were leaking to the media. But is there a way that they could have thought it through better? Did their actions even cause any repercussions for Boeing? I also think that the articles show that Boeing was in the process of fixing things. Also, it seems like they could have gone to the government rather than media if they wanted protection from whistle blower laws.
isabellehillberg 