Why do employees blow the #whistle? by #Robin #Singh (Published by #ACFE)

whistleblower isn’t sure about the validity
of what they’ve uncovered, they’re
unlikely to tell authorities because their
career could be destroyed if they’re
proven wrong. Whistleblowers might
spend years investigating a case before
they report it.
A whistleblower never wants to
be wrong or proven wrong. That’s why
even though 45 percent of workers
might notice wrongdoing, only 65 percent
of them are likely to report what
they saw, according to a 2011 National
Business Ethics Survey, “Retaliation:
When Whistleblowers Become Victims,”
tinyurl.com/yd2wt44d. They’ll
likely brush it off as anomalies or
chalk it up to human error. According
to the Ethics & Compliance Initiative,
nearly none receive widespread media
coverage. (See “Retaliation against
Whistle-Blowers: No Good Deed Goes
Unpunished,” by Michael McMillan,
CFA, Enterprising Investor, Oct. 24,
2012, tinyurl.com/y8b2fa5e.)
A whistleblower is counted as one
only if they’re employed by the organization
that they’re reporting on and can
suffer the consequences of their actions
from that organization. An outsider,
independent person or committee that
uncovers wrongdoing often isn’t considered
a whistleblower.
Psychology behind
whistleblowing
According to the British Psychological
Society, employees can determine if they
might fit the profile of a whistleblower if
they answer positively to most of these
questions:
• Are you highly educated?
• Do you show good performance in
your work?
• Do you think something can be done
about the problem?
• Is your organization seemingly responsive
to complaints?
• Is the problem not widely known?
• Are you a dominant but not always
the most agreeable in character?
(See “Why do some people choose
to blow the whistle,” by Craig Lewis and
Laurence Cawley, BBC News, March 24,
2015, tinyurl.com/ybopq9ld.)
Whistleblowers commonly talk
about how employees and managers
in their organizations bully them after
they’ve reported problems. Contrary
to what some might think, if a whistleblower
is a favored employee, then the
blowback is far greater.
Ethics versus loyalty
As Holzrichter discovered, the stakes are
quite high for a would-be whistleblower.
They need to understand that they’ll pay
a price for blowing the whistle on their
boss or peers. However, if they decide
not to blow the whistle they need to live
with that decision, which could have
even more negative implications for
their psyche.
COLUMNIST
CFE
COMPLIANCE AND
ETHICS LEAD OFFICER
In “The psychology of whistleblowing”
article in Current Opinion in Psychology,
the researchers outline a concept
they call, “the whistleblower’s dilemma:
the fairness-loyalty tradeoff.” The authors
write that “moral foundations theory”
identifies five basic moral values:
harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and
purity, which employees consider when
they’re faced with deciding whether a
behavior is right or wrong. They say that
“fairness and loyalty are brought into
direct conflict by situations that allow
for the possibility of whistleblowing.”
They tested the hypothesis “that
when norms for fairness dominate
norms for loyalty, whistleblowing will
increase, whereas when norms for
loyalty dominate norms for fairness,
whistleblowing will decrease.”
In a controlled study, the subjects
were asked to rank how likely they were
to blow the whistle on various targets,
including strangers, close friends, family
members and acquaintances for degrees
of wrongdoing ranging from stealing
$1 out of a restaurant tip jar to killing a
store clerk.
The results of subsequent studies
showed that those who endorsed
fairness over loyalty reported greater
willingness to be whistleblowers. In fact,
whistleblowers were seen to generally
speak, write and describe incidents from
a fairness point of view rather than the
loyalty point of view. Whistleblowers,
the researchers found, consistently
had an ethical viewpoint, rather than a
loyalty point of view.
Factors influencing
whistleblowing
Personal
Specific personal factors can identify a
whistleblower, the researchers report in
the Current Opinion in Psychology article.
According to data collected and analyzed,
a correlation exists between a certain
type of worker and their propensity
to blow the whistle, especially if they’re
the “fairness” sort of person. While correlation
doesn’t always equal causation,
this is an interesting look into the type
of person who’d place fairness above
loyalty to a company and the people that
are in it. The idea here is that clearly
a high sense of loyalty can deter and
hinder whistleblowing, but it doesn’t
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