"Today's Complicit Bystanders: the Professionals?"
Is there such a thing as an “innocent bystander?” What does it mean to witness harm and remain “innocent”? We are familiar with the binary of collaboration and resistance in reference to humankind's worst behavior. Many of us (perhaps including me) took advantage of the solitude of the Pandemic, entranced by all 85 episodes of A French Village, a saga of a television series that laid out in deeply human terms the French Resistance’s heroism during WWII. Opposite this valor, the program juxtaposed the shame of French collaborators. But isn’t that too simple? What of the bystanders, those millions who were neither heroic nor actively complicit? It is too simple to brand the bystanders, with the benefit of our historical hindsight and moral superiority, as complicit by virtue of their inaction. How do we make sense of the complicated nature of simply seeing, of standing by in inaction?
These questions remain salient. What of today’s professionals as analogous bystanders, especially in the context of social and professional norms?
- The marketing consultants who advise opioid manufacturers in promoting the sale of products that are clearly both lawful and necessary while also addictive and dangerous.
- The environmental compliance lawyer whose expertise is in identifying the regulatory exceptions or ambiguities that will shield activities that are damaging to the environment.
- The algorithmist whose artificial intelligence formulae are designed to identify creditworthiness for mortgage loans to potential home buyers, yet produce racial or gender bias.
- The journalist who in the interest of full (and fair) reporting objectively lays out facts as pronounced by the dishonest candidate for high office through quotation marks or video footage.
- The lawyer who in advocating for her client promotes election lies that cut to the heart of our democracy.
- The doctor who prescribes the medication that the patient demands because of the power of television ads and the requirement for patient agency, not because of what is in the best medical interest of the patient.
- The religious leader who, in his literal readings of scripture, creates a framework for harm to others.
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In each of these circumstances, the professionals are doing their jobs. Even doing them well, even in compliance with the legal and ethical norms of their professions. What is the problem?
The problem is that in some cases they become the equivalent of the innocent bystanders who, by their inaction, may be complicit. That is, they are doing nothing wrong, but they are potentially causing harm. How are we to regard them?
Let us be clear: these are not the equivalent of the cable-car dilemma; these are not situations where one is faced with two harmful scenarios. Instead, the question is one of judgment. Professional judgment. Ethical judgment. Professional ethics.
None of these professionals woke up in the morning and decided to take the described actions as part of a design to do harm that day. That’s not how it works. Instead, they woke up and decided to do their jobs, even to do their jobs well—as they had been trained to do, as they had been instructed by those who hired and now pay them. But, did they become complicit in unethical behavior?
There can be no excuse here. None of these professionals can simply claim to be an innocent bystander, can claim to be without stain. They must not lose sight that they were entrusted with responsibility by virtue of their choice of profession, by virtue of their influence. “Johnny is doing it” may be a reasonable excuse to an eight year old; “If I don’t do it, someone else will” may be the excuse of the irresponsible. But there can be no such excuses for the professionals.
An ethical duty of the professional is to be diligently self-aware and vigilant in asking about potential unintended consequences. Innocent bystanding by those who expect our trust is not a legitimate category. The bar is not the law or unexamined legal or ethical norms of the profession. Ethical judgment comes with higher requirements: namely thought, questioning, self-reflection, and judgment. We must question our ethics!
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