Tremendous public attention has focused recently on workplace and employment practices. All agree that employee success should be fostered and that no employees should face discrimination, but there is much disagreement about what non-discrimination means.

Concern stretches across the ideological spectrum. Some have pressured companies to adopt “Inclusion & Diversity” programs that seek to establish “racial/social equity,” which appears to mean the distribution of pay and authority on the basis of race, sex, orientation and ethnic categories rather than by merit.(1) Where adopted, such programs raise significant objection, including concern that the programs themselves are deeply racist, sexist and otherwise discriminatory.(2)

Many companies have been found to be sponsoring and promoting overtly and implicitly discriminatory employee-training and other employment and advancement programs, including Bank of America, American Express, Verizon, Pfizer, CVS and Apple itself.(3)

This disagreement and controversy create massive reputational, legal and financial risk. If the Company is, in the name of equity, diversity and inclusion, committing illegal or unconscionable discrimination against employees deemed “non-diverse,” then the Company will suffer in myriad ways — all of them both unforgivable and avoidable.

In developing the audit and report, the Company should consult civil-rights and public-interest law groups — but it must not compound error with bias by relying only on left-leaning organizations. Rather, it must consult groups across the spectrum of viewpoints. This includes right-leaning civil-rights groups representing people of color, such as the Woodson Center(4) and Project 21,(5) and groups that defend the rights and liberties of all Americans, not merely the ones that many companies label “diverse.” All Americans have civil rights; to behave otherwise is to invite disaster.

Similarly, when including employees in its audit, the Company must allow employees to speak freely without fear of reprisal or disfavor, and in confidential ways. Too many employers have established company stances that themselves chill contributions from employees who disagree with the company’s asserted positions, and then have pretended that the employees who have been empowered by the companies’ partisan positioning represent the true and only voice of all employees. This by itself creates a deeply hostile workplace for some groups of employees, and is both immoral and likely illegal.