The Nuances of Speaking Truth to Power: Considering the Delicate Balance of Ethical Dissent

Caroline Walsh
5 min readJan 28, 2025
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Social media has enabled people around the world to speak their truth, even if it goes against the powerful. Although not a linear progression, individuals our society have generally advanced in their expectations of how they want to be treated and what they expect from their leaders, whether political or in the workplace. From both of these trends, more people are more able, and more willing, to say what is on their mind when it comes to their perceived, or generally accepted, injustices or truths. What I learned from my interviews with 10 former CIA officers, is that there are important considerations to make prior to speaking that truth.

While conducting my study on CIA officers and their sensemaking of ethical leadership, this theme of speaking truth to power emerged. As an organization, the CIA not always been true to their truth telling mantra, as demonstrated with their many secret operations and a preference to keep the general public in the dark as long as possible. However, internal to the organization and at the individual level, speaking truth to power within the organization is a behavior the CIA has been attempting to normalize throughout its history. For example, structurally, compared to the military, the CIA has less policy against speaking up to those of higher rank. Employees could be informally shunned for speaking truth to power within the building, but rarely fired. Its stories passed down in trainings include those of analysts who spoke the truth and impacted major operations. Plus, symbolically, the headquarters building itself has the words on their wall in the main entrance, ‘And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’

Even with established norms around speaking truth, officers still approached the act with careful deliberation. Below are four mental exercises gathered from their reflections on speaking truth to power:

1. Can your career handle it?

One officer’s subordinates had complaints about the higher up boss, the chief who was in charge of all of them. The chief was acting unethically to the point that the employees were ready to report him to the Inspector General. They told this officer, who was the middle manager between them and the chief, what was happening and that they were going to report the behavior, this officer stopped them. He said:

‘Don’t do any of that, because your career can’t handle it at this point. Mine can.’

He then made the call himself. He explained:

I called up headquarters and talked to the grievance officer and explained the chief’s behavior and I said, ‘What do I do?’ She said ‘you don’t do anything anymore because you already did it. Once you tell me I gotta take action,’ and the IG was there in 48 hours.

As a leader, this officer deliberately chose to shield his team members from being associated with initiating what would likely become a serious investigation. It was his conscious decision to protect them from being tied to the case’s launch. He knew even with formal protections, their careers would be informally impacted and couldn’t handle being the ones to speak the truth.

2. Does the Larger Context Support Me?

Another officer engaged in intelligent disobedience. In this, he not only spoke truth to power, but when speaking it didn’t work, he creatively avoided an act that he found entirely unethical (details in my book pending publication). What did he consider prior to what would be a dissent with only weak plausible deniability?

I think they knew what I did. But what are they going to do? It’s the middle of a war, it’s not like they are going to send someone out there to reprimand me, and they wouldn’t be able to find a replacement with my language skills. Plus, my reputation was good.

He considered his safety in the larger context of the organization and current operations. He was needed, his skills were in demand, and it would have been complex to come out and impose a consequence. His favorable reputation, personal connections at headquarters, and the chaotic operational context created a unique environment where his principled resistance could occur without significant career damage.

3. How Can I Best Deliver This Message?

If it has to be done, if your conscious can’t handle not acting or speaking, or if your job requires it, how can you best deliver the truth that can’t stay within? One CIA officer who was speaking up against DoD’s misunderstanding of an issue, described at least the attempt at delivering it in the best way possible:

I was trying to be as polite and diplomatic as possible, and apparently I wasn’t quite making it. He was really offended, but his information and reaction were wrong. It would have been wrong to not speak up.

How can it be delivered diplomatically? What are the ways to make the message easier to hear, to integrate, to reduce one’s defenses? The CIA officer considered not only the truth that needed to be said, but the human psychology of communication. It didn’t always work, but at least they knew it was the best attempt at a message.

4. What’s my relationship with the receiver?

CIA officers are trained at building rapport and getting people to do things that are risky. From this organizational focus on using humans to gather intelligence and carry out operations, many officers understood the importance of human relationships and rapport when it came to giving feedback and the truth. Unfiltered pushback is usually only appropriate once a relationship is developed. Although this analyst had resisted orders before, she described how she could really speak her truth only later:

When I knew him better, I was like, ‘What planet are you living on? We are analysts, I’m not following orders just for the sake of following orders.’

In the age of social media allowing people to say anything and comment with anyone, with little thought about the relationship, it can seems “right” to blurt out a raw reaction to someone’s lack of thought or misunderstanding/denial of the truth. However, research shows that most effective feedback strategy is a foundation of genuine, trusted relationship-building.

Many people want to do the right thing and speak out when they witness a lack of ethics. It is a great thing to do and it is necessary for our society to continue to push for proper treatment collectively. However, these experienced CIA officers highlight in their reflections on their own experiences of speaking the truth in very important moments, that while speaking truth is crucial, wisdom lies in carefully understanding the potential consequences and choosing the most strategic moment and approach for delivering difficult messages.

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Caroline Walsh
Caroline Walsh

Written by Caroline Walsh

Former CIA Analyst with a PhD in Leadership Studies. Author of Fairly Smooth Operator: My life occasionally at the tip of the spear, available now!

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