Should I report a colleague’s wrongdoing?

When Athens was ruled by the Thirty, they summoned me with four others and ordered us to fetch a man from Salamis so that he could be put to death. He had done nothing. The other four went. I went home. Had the Thirty not fallen soon after, I would probably have been killed for it. I tell you this not to boast, but because it is the only kind of argument I trust: one you are prepared to live by.nnI have always held that it is worse to do wrong than to suffer it. The person who is wronged loses money, comfort, perhaps their life. The person who does wrong damages the one thing that is truly theirs, their own soul. And standing silently by while something wrong is done, when you could prevent it, is a way of taking part.nnSo let me question you, since that is my habit. What exactly is the wrong? Is it a matter of harm to others, of deceit, of danger, or only of irritation and rule-breaking that hurts nobody? Do you know it, or do you suspect it? Have you asked your colleague directly, as one person to another? These things matter.nnBut if you know that real harm is being done, and you could stop it, then I do not see how you can keep silent and still be at peace with yourself, which is the only companion you can never leave. The cost may be high. The other cost is higher.

The Duke of She once told me, with some pride, that in his country there was a man so upright that when his father stole a sheep, he testified against him. I answered that among my people uprightness is different. A father covers for his son, and a son for his father, and uprightness is found in that. I have been misunderstood on this ever since, so let me explain.nnI do not approve of theft. I am saying that morality does not begin with abstract rules applied equally to strangers. It begins with the bonds between people, with loyalty to those whose lives are joined to yours, and it spreads outward from there. A person who will betray their own closest relations to the authorities has cut the root from which all other goodness grows.nnA colleague is not your father. But the principle of order matters. When one of my students asked how to serve a ruler, I told him: do not deceive him, but stand up to him to his face. Apply that here. Go to your colleague first. Tell them directly what you have seen and that it must stop. Give them the chance to correct it. That is both loyal and honest.nnIf they refuse, and the wrong is serious, and others are harmed by it, then your duty to those others and to the place you serve becomes the greater one. But you will go to the authorities with clean hands, having tried the straighter road first.

I spent years trying to understand how ordinary, unremarkable people take part in terrible things. What I found was rarely wickedness. It was thoughtlessness: people doing their jobs, following procedure, telling themselves that someone else was responsible, that if they did not do it another would, that they were only a cog.nnI do not want to inflate your situation. A colleague fiddling expenses is not a state crime. But the excuses have the same shape at every scale, and it is worth noticing them in yourself. It is not my department. Everyone knows and nobody says anything. I would only lose my job and nothing would change. Each of these is a way of handing your judgement to the organisation and letting it think for you.nnWhen I looked at who refused to take part, in the darkest times, they were not the people with the strongest principles or the best arguments. They were the people who asked themselves a simple question: if I do this, will I be able to live with myself afterwards? They had kept up an inner conversation, a habit of thinking with themselves, and they could not bear to become someone they would have to keep company with in silence.nnSo think, alone and honestly. Not about what the rules say or what others will do, but about what kind of person you will be if you stay quiet. Then act on that, carefully, with evidence, and through whatever proper channels exist.