(FORTUNE Magazine) – So what core values do Amazon.com and the Ku Klux Klan share? Both ardently champion their First Amendment rights and both celebrate the importance of anonymous criticism.

One key difference between Amazon.com and the KKK is that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently upheld a ruling requiring that Klan members march in public without wearing their hoods. At Amazon, however, you can still write mean, vicious, spiteful attacks--politely called reviews--on books and their authors under a cloak of anonymity. While it's impossible to imagine the folks at Amazon.com spewing hateful or racist views themselves, they've created a global forum where such musings may be masked by almost anyone with a minimum of technical expertise. People needn't attach a real identity to their ideas. "Free expression" is effectively subsidized by digital disguise.

This networked anonymity is a sleazy software mask that lets corporate mischief-makers and malcontents get away with taking cheap shots at people who have the guts to sign their names. If companies permit or even encourage anonymous e-mail and bulletin boards, odds are the risks of abuse--sexual harassment, lies, personal insults, threats, revelation of proprietary information--surely outweigh the rewards. Much as CFOs are now forced to respond to anonymous criticisms on day-trading message boards, managers will be forced to pay attention to anonymous innuendo swirling through their intranets and extranets.

Corporations are hardly the first to exploit anonymity. The world's most prestigious science publications still cling to the practice of "anonymous peer review." The underlying rationale is that premier scientists will be more honest if their names aren't attached to their reviews. Apparently their peers are far too weak or vengeful or gutless or charismatic--pick one!--to trust with unvarnished appraisals of their work.

So if "rational" scientists opt for anonymous reviews, why not "irrational" organizations? Under the anonymity-begets-honesty scenario, forget 360-degree job reviews with attributed comments; individuals are best and most honestly evaluated by anonymous review. Innovators shouldn't bother with attributed comments about their ideas when they are more likely to hear the truth from colleagues whose names have been concealed.

Some organizations honestly see anonymity as a healthy, essential part of their internal dialogue, a mechanism that promotes free and unfettered comment. At one giant aerospace manufacturer in the Northwest, for example--what the heck! it's Boeing!--managers were positively grateful that the brainstorming software they used encouraged anonymous contributions. "If we had to attach our names to our suggestions, I think people would be less forthcoming," insisted one engineer there who, yes, asked not to be identified. Boeing's culture at the time, he argued, made it difficult for younger engineers to publicly criticize senior colleagues. But that pragmatism misses the real opportunity, which is to create an environment in which people are not afraid of retaliation for making constructive criticisms.

There's no denying anonymity's seductive appeal. Market forces have spawned provocative innovations to support anonymity. For example, Vault.com, a two-year-old Net startup, has created a growing global gray market in anonymous messaging for several of the world's leading companies. The firm encourages employees to share information, career advice, and gossip about their enterprise on anonymous message boards. Nosy journalists have been known to troll for sources there. Vault.com has become a de facto Internet outsourcer of the corporate grapevine. Co-founder Hussam Hamadeh acknowledges that Vault.com doesn't really know who is posting comments on the message boards but argues that the boards are self-regulating. "If someone is saying stuff that just isn't true or accurate," he observes, "other people are going to call them on it." Up to 9% of Goldman Sachs employees check in with Vault's Goldman board during any given week, Hamadeh notes with pride, and many more may be checking in from their homes or portable computers. Morgan Stanley, by contrast, blocks Vault.com access from its intranets. McKinsey & Co. seems to have actual--albeit unnamed--partners respond to inquiries posted on its board. "They seem to know how to use us," Hamadeh observes.

What an irony! You have to go outside the organization to talk honestly about the firm--and even then the talk is shrouded in anonymity. Is that healthy? Absolutely not. If organizations aren't careful, they're going to discover their credibility disintermediated by the Vault.coms and anonymous messages flowing on their own internal networks. Anonymity should be an occasional spice--not the substance--of communications and criticisms within an enterprise. The network trend is not management's friend here: Anonymity seems to be becoming more important and more credible than attribution. How can you build a culture of accountability in an ecology of anonymity? You can't, and you shouldn't.

MICHAEL SCHRAGE is a Merrill Lynch Forum Innovation Fellow, a research associate with the MIT Media Lab, and the author of Serious Play. He may be reached at michael_schrage@fortunemail.com.