In her case against the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) that resulted from actions against her for blowing the whistle on improper agency practices, Diem-Thi Le sought to provide DCAA documents to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to back up her claims of retaliation. DCAA provided Le with a memo that said she was “not permitted to access or copy or possess any Agency document for [her] private purposes, including preparation of complaints in any forum,” according to the OSC report, which directly quoted the memo. DCAA Assistant General Counsel John Green lee drafted the template of the August 31, 2007 memo, which bore the signature of Sharon Kawamoto, one of Le’s supervising auditors.
Le wanted clarification. Kawamoto told Greenlee in a September 7, 2007, email that Le wanted to know if she could “access documents related to audits cited in her performance appraisals in order to prepare complaints to OSC and the Equal Employment Opportunity Office,” states the OSC report. Le wanted copies of her performance appraisals and related emails. Greenlee responded that Le “may not distribute or disclose those documents to anyone else—period—without asking permission. That permission will not be granted her.” Do you think Le should have been provided access to her performance appraisal sand related emails, given that some aspects of this information contained work-related matters and client information? Does she have an “ethical right” to such information? What ethical limitations might have existed for Le with respect to using this information, assuming that she was a member of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA)?