Take Elin Baklid-Kunz. After a decade working for Halifax, a hospital in Florida, Baklid-Kunz was promoted to its compliance department. She quickly realised that things were awry: a ‘revenue-above-all philosophy’ saw patients unnecessarily admitted, the hospital was overbilling the government for client care that was never delivered, and specialists were being paid bonuses linked to the hospital’s operating margin (which is illegal). Beyond the millions of dollars being fraudulently billed, this conduct had a human toll: a surgical error made during an allegedly unnecessary spinal fusion left a patient unable to walk.

After her tireless internal whistleblowing fell on deaf ears, Baklid-Kunz eventually consulted lawyers and sued the hospital in conjunction with the Department of Justice. She was made a pariah at work (‘it was like I had the plague’) and slandered in her local community by a PR firm hired by the hospital (a colleague publicly labelled her conduct as ‘beyond morally obscene’). Once the lawsuit was settled, she found herself blacklisted in the industry. Due to her speaking out against wrongdoing, Baklid-Kunz’s career was ruined.

Tom Mueller (photograph by Dave Yoder)

This ordeal is just one of two dozen human tales that Mueller explores. They range from the health-care sector to pharmaceuticals, intelligence, the military, academia, international development, energy, and finance. There are three constants: unthinkable fraud, corruption, or wrongdoing; brave individuals sounding the alarm to their supervisor, regulators, or the public; and a swift, brutal backlash. These stories, Mueller writes, present us ‘with an unsettling challenge. In [their] place, would we do what [they] did, risk what [they] risked?’ Rather than play the ‘tragic hero’, are we more likely to be ‘a member of the chorus, looking on fascinated, appalled, yet silent, one of the countless mute witnesses too fearful or stunned to react’? It is a question that will prompt plenty of soul-searching.

Even the structures that governments and companies have set up to prevent wrongdoing and to encourage whistleblowing have failed. There is considerable irony in the fact that Baklid-Kunz worked in her hospital’s compliance department, effectively an institutionalised whistleblowing unit. While regulatory obligations, compliance staff, ‘speak-up’ hotlines, and ethics training have proliferated, ‘corporate crime has continued unabated’. In the United States alone, fraud is estimated to cost the economy five per cent of GDP; the World Bank puts the global sum at close to A$7 trillion. Mueller speaks to Tom Devine, a doyen of whistleblowing law, who tells him: ‘I’ve never met an organizational leader who is against whistleblowing in theory, and in practice, I’ve never met a leader who believes there actually were any whistleblowers in their own organization. They seem to be thinking, “Those people [in my organization] aren’t whistleblowers. They’re assholes.”’

Mueller is a writer of considerable talent. He contributes to The New Yorker and New York Times Magazine, and his first book, Extra Virginity (2011) – on the scandal-wracked world of olive oil – was a bestseller. His research is exhaustive: the book includes forty pages of annotated bibliographical notes, giving readers a guide ‘to the broad landscapes of learning that relate to whistleblowing as a social, legal, economic, psychological, biological, philosophical and historical phenomenon’. Mueller delicately deploys this broader context throughout the main text, effortlessly weaving together individual stories and higher-level theory. For all the research that underpins Crisis of Conscience, it remains a compelling read, with beautiful prose, dark humour, and plenty of adjectivally dense passages from Mueller’s travels in search of whistleblowers.

It is hard to fault such a powerful book. At almost 600 pages, the length may be off-putting to a casual reader. Some of the tales of individual whistleblowers, while instructive, might have been condensed or omitted to make this a tighter narrative and remove thematic repetition. Crisis of Conscience’s only substantive shortcoming is an absence of solutions: it is easy to bemoan the fate of whistleblowers, but how do we collectively change their lot? Mueller frequently references the Government Accountability Project, a trailblazing whistleblowing charity in Washington, DC, but only fleetingly highlights its work promoting stronger laws domestically and internationally. Across the globe, whistleblowing laws are heading in the right direction: in 2019 Australia overhauled its protections for private-sector whistleblowers, while the European Union passed a landmark directive requiring all member states to introduce robust laws. Greater reflection on the future of whistleblowing may have offered a more upbeat ending.

Crisis of Conscience could not be timelier, though this was not Mueller’s intent. The book has its origins in 2012, on the eve of Barack Obama’s re-election, when the turbulence of Donald Trump and the coronavirus were not even among Nostradamus’s worst nightmares. The past twelve months have underscored the importance of whistleblowing, such as the anonymous truth-teller whose revelations led to Trump’s impeachment trial, and the Chinese doctor, now deceased, who first raised awareness about the deadly virus (he was advised by police to stop ‘making false comments’). Closer to home, whistleblowers have precipitated several royal commissions and disclosed outrageous governmental misconduct. The rise of whistleblowing, the author notes, ‘is a symptom of a society in deep distress’.

Mueller concludes with an epilogue entitled ‘The Banana Republic Wasn’t Built in a Day’ and a quote from John Stuart Mill: ‘Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.’ One obvious reaction to the tales of suffering set out in Crisis of Conscience, many of which end with words to the effect of ‘I wouldn’t do it again’, would be a strong aversion to blowing the whistle. While understandable, that is not the response Mueller hoped to elicit. ‘We all have the capacity to speak truth to power,’ he muses. If our society is to successfully navigate these tumultuous times, we must all speak up.