Dilemma 3:

Jesse, 14, plays baseball on a district all-star team. Last year his team reached the district finals only to lose (as usual) to the traditional powerhouse that hails from one of the larger city suburbs. But Jesse’s team has high hopes of winning the final this year and move on to the state tournament. Their optimism rides the strong pitching arm of Larry Porter, a new player who joined the team at the beginning of the year. Because Larry is just about unhittable, the team rarely loses when he pitches.

A few days before the playoffs begin, Jesse discovers by chance some unsettling information: Larry doesn’t actually live in the district. Larry lists his uncle’s address as his home, but he actually lives with his parents in an adjoining district. Jesse doesn’t know what to do. He doubts that his coach knows about the sham address. If he reveals Larry’s secret, and his teammates find out that he was the informer, they will think he’s a rat. Beyond that, the team’s chances in the playoffs will take a nosedive if Larry is disqualified. Jesse wonders whether it’s best to keep quiet and hope that nobody else uncovers the truth.

Batstone:

Jesse clearly wishes that he had never learned the truth. Unfortunately, the truth often finds us whether we are looking for it or not. The test of our character is what we do with the knowledge we do have.

I have interviewed several senior managers who worked at Enron, the energy company that lied to its investors and the public about its earnings (to the tune of billions of dollars). They readily admit to the comfort of burying their heads in the sand and wishing that the dishonesty would go away. But it didn’t, and the silence let a travesty go on for years that ended up losing the jobs and retirement income of tens of thousands of innocent people. One former senior executive of Enron told me that left to grow, deception can take over a company: “Once you stop telling the truth, you spend as much of your time covering up for your lies as you do creating real value.”

The consequences will not be so dire in Jesse’s situation, of course, but courage is not an easy path to walk all the same. Who knows? Jesse’s courage may end up saving the team from disaster down the road. The farther his team goes in the playoffs, the likelihood increases that the truth of Larry’s living situation will emerge. And that revelation would lead to the team’s disqualification – and public shame.

So Jesse should go to his coach immediately and tell him what he knows. It would be best to speak to the coach alone confidentiality. The coach can then validate whether Jesse’s information is accurate. Just think how awkward it would be if Jesse made a blustery announcement to the whole team, then found out that he had been misinformed about Larry’s home situation. One would hope that the coach would do the right thing. If the coach does not, then Jesse will have a much bigger ethical conundrum!