Diversity

Leadership & Management
79
Whistling in the wind…
The country owes a great debt to whistle-blowers but for a
company, a revelation can be a corporate earthquake.
BY ITA GIBNEY
Psychologists have a saying that
“you are only as sick as your
secrets” and psychotherapy
has taken off as people deal with
their issues through counselling,
confessional memoirs, forgiveness
and going public. Even the most
admired and healthy-looking
individuals (Bruce Springsteen, for
example) are surprising us by telling
us about their vulnerabilities. But
that’s therapeutic, inspiring and part
of the recovery process. It usually
happens when the person is able and
ready to face particular issues or
problems.
But consider this: if someone else
– someone within the family, for
example – were to ‘out’ your secret or
your wrongdoing without warning,
how could you then deal with it and
the trauma that would inevitably
arise?
The corporate analogy is whistleblowing.
In any game, it is up to the
referee to blow the whistle. Can you
imagine if a player on the Mayo team
had one of their own team blowing
the whistle when he saw a foul by
his teammate? It would upend the
game. In corporate entities, the act
of whistle-blowing runs completely
counter to how organisations work –
be it a bank, church, police force, or
political party. They are all systems
where, when something goes wrong,
the default dynamic is to close ranks
and defend the side.
Whistle-blowing turns such
systems on their heads. It blows the
lid off the game, the organisation, its
leader and its entire structure and
culture.
Exposed and alone
Maybe we have reached this stage
in corporate Ireland because the
various referees have been seen to be
silent and blind. The public attitude
is therefore akin to “fair dues to
the whistle-blower”, recognising
the courage it takes to act outside
the system but also ignoring the
isolation, scapegoating, character
assassination, criminal investigation
and future unemployability he or she
may have to endure. Even the real
referee will likely not befriend the
guy who blew the whistle.
Cheering on the whistle-blower is
fine, and the media and politicians
do so given the feast of information
he or she can provide. Giving
legal protection in the form of
protected disclosures is progress,
but being exposed and alone as
the corporate ‘snitch’ when the
earthquake happens can be a lonely
and dangerous place to be – as
history shows. Ireland is too small a
country to have a witness protection
programme, but maybe we could
look at the citizen enforcement
action provisions in the US. Whistleblowers
risk retaliation if they
challenge abuse of power or any
other misconduct that betrays the
public trust, and numerous studies
have confirmed this. To ensure the
effectiveness of a disclosure, the
US False Claims Act enfranchises
whistle-blowers to file suits in court
against illegality exposed by their
Giving legal protection in the form of
protected disclosures is progress, but being exposed
and alone as the corporate ‘snitch’ when the
earthquake happens can be a lonely and dangerous
place to be – as history shows.
disclosures. These types of suits
are known as “qui tam” actions in a
reference to the Latin phrase “he who
sues on behalf of himself as well as
the king”. These statutes can provide
both litigation costs and a portion of
money recovered for the government
to the citizen whistle-blower. It is
the nation’s most effective whistleblower
law in history for the
difference it has made, increasing
civil fraud recoveries in government
contracts from $27 million annually
in 1985 to over $1 billion annually
since 2000.
Cases in point
Aside from the WikiLeaks initiatives
and alleged hacking that impacted
on the most recent US election,
consider the most controversial
www.accountancyireland.ie