This really happened! The details have been changed— to protect the innocent, of course.
Jonah Delaney, a 22-year-old employee of a large health maintenance organization, sent an e-mail through- out the company charging that the multibillion-dollar conversion to electronic medical records was a mess.
In his e-mail, he noted he wasn’t concerned just about the money; he was more concerned about medical pro- fessionals having the tools they needed “to save lives.”
Delaney believed he would be protected by the HMO’s policy encouraging people to report ethical prob- lems. He was not; in fact, he was fired. The CIO “coinci- dentally” resigned at the same time. Delaney’s criticism got a government watchdog agency to monitor the HMO and a large newspaper to run the story.

Answer the questions
Would you risk your job for an ethics issue this large?
A smaller ethics issue?
How could Mr. Delaney have handled differently the problem he saw?