Whistleblowers and Confidentiality Obligations

Whistleblowing involves the revelation of misconduct or illegality occurring in an organization. This necessarily involves disclosing secret information beyond the bounds intended by those trying to keep it secret, and often this involves publication and disclosure to the general public. By virtue of the fact that whistleblowers exist within the organizations they are exposing, they are almost always under some contractual or statutory requirement not to disclose the information they are disclosing. If one takes these obligations at face value then it would appear that whistleblowing must always be regarded as a breach of law, and possibly also a breach of ethics, at least insofar as it involves a breach of contract with the organization where the whistleblower is employed. Under such a view, whistleblowing can never be legally justified, and it is only through an ethical imperative to break the law that it could be justified ethically.

Confidentiality contracts are a legitimate part of the management of many kinds of organizations, and in many cases they are indispensible to the successful operation of the organization.