The question as to whether or not one should blow the whistle on unacceptable engineering practices are notoriously difficult to assess. Unjustified whistle blowing may harm the company or organisation one is part of. At the same time, whistle blowers often make huge personal sacrifices once they do decide to bring out compromising information about their organisation or sector.

Guidelines: To help assess whether whistle blowing is justified and even morally required business ethicists Richard DeGeorge has proposed the following guidelines:

1. The organization to which the would-be whistleblower belongs will, through its product or policy, do serious and considerable harm to the public (whether to users of its product, to innocent bystanders, or to the public at large.
2. The would-be whistleblower has identified that threat of harm, reported it to her immediate superior, making clear both the threat itself and the objection to it, and concluded that the superior will do nothing effective.
3. The would-be whistleblower has exhausted other internal procedures within the organization (for example, by going up the organizational ladder as far as allowed) – or at least made use of as many internal procedures as the danger to others and her own safety make reasonable.
4. The would-be whistleblower has (or has accessible) evidence that would convince a reasonable, impartial observer that her view of the threat is correct.
5. The would-be whistleblower has good reason to believe that revealing the threat will (probably) prevent the harm at reasonable cost (all things considered).

This list shows the importance of taking a step-wise approach to whistle blowing. Individual engineers should first made attempts to resolve the threat or harm within the organisation before they are allowed to bring it out in the open.