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 throughout 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 professionals having the tools they needed “to save lives.”

Delaney believed he would be protected by the HMO’s policy encouraging people to report ethical problems.

He was not; in fact, he was fired. The CIO “coincidentally”

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.

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?