A Whistleblower is an employee or ex-employee of an organization, who discloses information about serious malpractice by that organization, not otherwise known or visible, where the disclosure is made in the reasonable belief that there is malpractice and the disclosure is made in good faith, without malice, and may be in the public interest. This paper analyzes the case of Sherron Watkins, the Enron whistle-blower. The justification for her case can be assessed as follows:

Ms. Watkins’ concerns had sufficient moral weight in that Enron was using off-the-books partnerships to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in losses in an effort to inflate its profits. Events took over and Enron later admitted it had overstated its profits dating back to 1997 by $600 million. In December 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy, its value having fallen by over $1 billion. She described accounting for the failed partnerships as robbing a bank in one year and trying to pay it back 2 years later, and she just didn't think it could be done. The harm here is that Enron employees (and stockholders) found themselves redundant, with pensions (which had been invested in Enron stock) worth a fraction of their original value.

As a vice-president she had all the facts and understood their significance. I believe she had all the necessary documentation and other corroborations to support her action. For instance, the former Enron vice chairman, Clifford Baxter, like Sherron Watkins, a key whistleblower at Enron, had expressed his concerns about Enron’s financial health early in 2001. Baxter’s reputation was that of a straight arrow, and his friends believe that he would have testified truthfully. Sherron Watkins said he had “complained mightily” to Chairman Lay about the partnerships that Enron created to conceal its debts, inflate its profits and siphon off millions of dollars for some officials and investors.

Further, I think she exhausted all internal channels in her capacity but got no action to rectify the situation. When she sent a memo to Enron chairman Kenneth Lay warning him about accounting practices in the company; stating that the company will implode in a wave of accounting scandals. Lay’s responded by instigating a limited investigation that neither checked Enron's accounting nor engaged in a full-scale independent examination of company documents, a report by the law firm later said. Enron's chief financial officer Andrew Fastow sought her dismissal after hearing about her warnings instead. So her case was justified in that the whole organization was so mired in the wrongdoing in that there was little chance that using them would succeed in eradicating the problem.

The release information must be voluntarily as opposed to being legally acquired. In her case, the information was acquired legally. In the media, she’s portrayed as a whistle-blower, although she never really blew a whistle. A whistle-blower would have written that letter to a major media outlet but she wrote her memo to Ken Lay.  She might have made calls here there about her concerns, which she wanted to address internally; however, congressional investigators that probably justified her action as not being a snitch released her memo. With her memo being critical evidence, she became a key government witness.

Ms. Watkins acted as a responsible employee. She might have called up the Securities and Exchange Commission with her concerns or shared them with the media, neither of which would be in the interests of Enron. Given her actions, we can infer that Ms. Watkins thought Enron was on shaky ground, not necessarily crumbling ground.
Likewise, her action was a moral protest to correct some wrong and not to seek revenge. She was expressing the notion that the agency relation does not require employees to engage in illegal immoral activities and so she stood up to do what was morally right instead of following the bandwagon.

It is vital to blow the whistle only when there is s reasonable chance of achieving success. Congressman Jim Greenwood said that Ms. Watkins is "a loyal company employee, who sought valiantly and sadly, in vain, to get the people in charge to face the facts and make the hard choices needed to save the company." With such support, her actions were not only morally right but also successful in drawing attention to correct such corporate epidemic of scandals.

Reference:
Boatright, John R. (2003). “Ethics and The Conduct of Business.” Upper Saddle River:
                  Prentice Hall

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18876-2002Jul29?language=printer

http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2002/poywatkins.html

http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/2002/04.html