Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 61

INSIGHT

specifically responsible for everything his or her command does and fails to do. Therefore, an officer should
deconflict impossible orders by following those orders
which best serve the common good. However, an officer cannot choose which orders to follow while still reporting that all orders have been followed. As agents of
the public trust, some of whom have been vested with
the authority to make life or death decisions, I do not
believe that officers should be a force unto themselves.
Military officers are drawn from and serve the
American people, and they are ultimately responsible
to the people’s representatives. Those representatives
make decisions based on the view from the top of the
chain of command, a view that is sometimes supplemented by input from the middle and bottom of the
chain of command. Some officers may view falsely
reporting compliance as protecting themselves or their
units from micromanagement, but each individual
deviation slowly changes that officer from a public
servant—accountable to the American people—into a
petty tyrant, accountable only to him or herself.

Policing Our Own
I believe that Wong and Gerras would attribute my
action to ethical fading.5 I did not care about filling out my
forms accurately because the only thing that mattered was
meeting the appropriate deadline and continuing with my
day. Lying to Ourselves outlines how ethical fading changes

a signature block from the sworn statement of a public
servant to the preferred tool of a well-seasoned bureaucrat. It also offers three steps for how to repair and preempt ethical fading: “Acknowledge the problem. Exercise
restraint. Lead truthfully.”6 The medical staff screening my
paperwork at LDAC did exactly that.
When I reported to the medical station, I was
pulled aside and handed a folder. Among other things,
this folder had the medical history I submitted to the
DODMERB and the medical history I had submitted to
LDAC. The conditions I had reported in 2009 but failed
to report four years later were highlighted, and I was
instructed to correct the history I submitted in 2013.
For each highlighted entry, I verified that what I had
reported in 2009 was true and updated the information
as necessary. By pointing out my mistake and giving me
the opportunity to correct it, the medical staff at LDAC
gave me a gentle nudge in the right direction.
I believe this nudge represented an effective and
reasonable first step for implementing the recommendations of Wong and Gerras. Calling out obvious dishonesty and then correcting it shows that integrity always matters. Acknowledging that a systemic integrity problem
can be fixed by focusing on the truth instead of staging a
witch hunt to punish dishonesty reflects that all Army
officers are responsible for this problem, reaffirms each
officer’s commitment to the Army Values, and regenerates the military profession one officer at a time.

1st Lt. Robert P. Callahan Jr., U.S. Army, is assigned to Fort Rucker, Alabama. He holds an AB, magna cum laude,
from Cornell University.

Notes
1. Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras, Lying to Ourselves:
Dishonesty in the Army Profession (Monograph, Strategic Studies
Institute, 2015).
2. Enlisted and Officer Candidate School applicants are examined at a MEPS. The DODMERB evaluates the medical fitness of all
Reserve Officer Training Corps and service academy applicants.
Class 1 flight physicals are required for flight school applicants.
3. Department of Defense Form 1, Officer’s Commission,
January 2000.
4. Robert E. Atkinson Jr., The Limits of Military Officers’ Duty
to Obey Civilian Orders: A Neo-Classical Perspective (Monograph, Strategic Studies Institute, 2015). Atkinson explores the

MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2016

relationship between military officers and their civilian superiors.
However, he points out that the relationship between the civilian
statesman and military officer is paralleled in the relationship
between military superiors and subordinates.
5. Ann E. Tenbrunsel and David M. Messick, “Ethical Fading:
The Role of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior” Social Justice Research 17 (2004): 224, accessed 19 September 2015, doi:10.1023/
B:SORE.0000027411.35832.53. Wong and Gerras use the
definition of ethical fading offered by Tenbrunsel and Messick:
“the process by which the moral colors of an ethical decision fade
into bleached hues that are void of moral implications.”
6. Wong and Gerras, Lying to Ourselves, 28–33.

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