Nicolas ROLLAND

Not reporting on observed unethical behaviour is morally wrong. Not using the company's established whistle-blowing procedure to report on sexist/racist/personalized jokes by managers, non-compliant financial or business activities... is wrong.

First of all, we all agreed on the fact that in this kind of situations, it is crucial to proceed with caution. Indeed, if everybody in the company learns about an unethical behaviour, it can weaken the working atmosphere in the company as well as the relationships between all the employees. For that reason, the first reaction to have is to communicate directly to the person accused and not to the other employees, in order to keep positive working conditions in the firm. Moreover, denouncing unethical behaviour can be seen as a sign of distrust towards all the colleagues and may weaken your position in the firm.
Here the issue is twofold because two behaviours can explain a bad joke: either the person is light-hearted which can be excused, or it’s a real discriminatory behaviour. In this second case, the person has the duty to report this conduct to the administration and the firm has the duty to impose disciplinary measures on this person.

To me, there’s a reason why codes of ethics are being increasingly adopted in companies worldwide, that’s why in many situations, denouncing unethical behaviours is legitimate and imposing disciplinary sanctions is a logical consequence for unethical behaviours.
Indeed, an employee who observes unethical behaviour by a colleague will often question whether the incident warrants reporting. For that reason, we have to study the factors that may affect peer reporting of questionable behaviour.
To my mind, the decision to report an unethical behaviour depends on the social context. Taking disciplinary measures is the right solution in two precise situations: if the misconduct threatens the interests of group members and if reporting belongs to the responsibility of group members. Here there’s no room for unethical behaviours that’s why sanctions have to be exemplary.
Moreover, I think there are different levels of unethical actions. Those levels are to be taking in consideration when it comes to report such behaviours. Indeed, when the subject deals with racist or sexist jokes, report is a professional obligation, because you can’t turn a blind eye on such conducts. But in case of bad jokes with no real intention to hurt a community, there’s no reason to spread the issue to the whole company.

To conclude with, reporting unethical behaviours or not depends on the person who sees the misconduct, on the social context and on the nature of the joke.