I was analyzing results for a health survey for an eastern North American regional government. My 2 co-workers and I complained vociferously to the survey manager about a standard procedure that was putting young and/or female survey respondents at risk. If the respondent was not at home or did not have time for the long survey, the questionnaire was left for them to be sealed in an envelope for later pickup by the survey field person. But the survey contained sensitive questions about sexual behavior for all respondents in the household over 15 as I recall. From comments of the field personnel, my co-workers found out some fathers had ripped open the envelopes and read their daughters' answers, leading to "dire" consequences for the girls. The manager brusquely cut off the discussion, citing cost and the need to maintain high levels of response. And none of us even escalated it as far as i know. So we do not know if anything was done (possibly other divisions of it were alerted) or what the impact was of the ill-advised procedure. I was sole support to my wife and 2 teen agers on contract in a tight market and felt the manager would fire me if I pursued it. I had been enthusiastic about the project early on, working through Christmas drafting the report outline, but I already felt disheartened re a conflict with the manager over ensuring that the report would have statistically strong useful content, a problem I had encountered in government before with managers who buried or altered my substantive reports because they wanted risk-free, bland results. None of those cases had direct risks of harm to people.
Because I am outspoken at work in government and corporate jobs, I generally have never, aside of this case, had a serious ethical dilemma because people doing questionable things know from the outset not to put me in the loop, And my career has likely underperformed, partly because of that.
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