Whistleblowing: The biggest right or the biggest wrong?

The term ‘whistleblowing’ gained popularity in the late 20th century, becoming essential to the basic understanding of businesses as well as business ethics. Ultimately, the word can be broken down further into ‘speaking up’ and ‘raising concerns’ about a respective corporation to an employer or colleague about malpractice or upcoming safety concerns. Although in theory it seems like a utopianist ideal which would protect the lives of countless stakeholders, in practice it could actually have detrimental impacts upon the quotidian life of the whistleblower and the consumer.

Whistleblowing can be further broken down into three subsets: internal, external and cyber. The most frequent of these is internal, where an employee reports wrongdoing to another party within the organisation. Thus followed by external, involves reporting the incident to sources outside the organisation such as a relevant prescribed body. When doing so, employees must reasonably believe that the malpractice falls within the remit of the organisation they are reporting to, for example, health and safety complaints can be made to the Health and Safety Executive. Finally, cyber  evolved alongside the increased risk of security and storage of data online. These types of whistleblowing cases can involve security breaches, unsecure practices, encryption deficiencies, and being hacked. 

It’s important to note that discovering wrongdoings in certain fields of work require specific channels and procedures. If you’re unsure of which route to take, our experts are here to advise you to ensure your report is managed effectively.

These all have the collective aim to protect consumers from corporate offences. Moreover, this takes form into the protection of criminal offences, health and safety danger as well as risk to the environment. All in the effort to stop the miscarriage of justice within a society. However it is important to also consider its negatives, The University of Greenwich reported that out of 1000 whistleblowers,  82% raised concerns internally, 15% externally and 3% with a trade union. Of the 40% where workers described a response, the most common response was formal action short of dismissal such as demotion, suspension or disciplinary action. This sheds light upon the internal gaslighting and legal issues that come associated with such whistleblowing. Evidently, to be whistleblown is a substantial blow to a company’s PR and reputation, thus most try to settle the issues internally with large sums of money or promise of a promotion. 

In fact, some of our most renowned banks have come under fire. Recently, UBS paid $780 MM to avoid criminal prosecution due to one of their most poignant and prominent cases. Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblew but kept and covered up what his biggest client was doing so he went to prison for 30 months. However, he still won $104 MM for the whistleblowing case, this evidently portrays the unjust nature of a whistleblowing case as the right, moral course of action could still lead to negative ramifications. Moreover, it places uncanny amounts of significance on the role of monetary compensation and its importance. What can be inferred here is that money and wealth is placed upon the same scale and pedigree as human rights and moral justice. 

Ultimately, although it may have unprecedented or guaranteed outcomes, whistleblowing is should be the right course of action as it’s important to expose misconduct when there can for instance potentially be lives on the line,however, it can often have a terrible impact on the whistleblower as they could lose employment or have a criminal investigation started against them and this can be a lot of pressure for one individual to shoulder just for trying to do the right thing. Whistleblowing is also really important due to  high profile cases that raise people’s awareness of how common malpractice or misconduct can be and encourage people to have a questioning mindset.

In light of the University of Greenwich statistics, whistleblowing is a more complex matter that could not be labelled as always the right course of action as a lot of the time (in 74% of cases) the whistleblowing doesn’t have the intended effect of exposing a company or have a severe impact on the company but instead has a detrimental impact on people outside the company.

By Aurore Lebrun.

Informations and statistcs taken from an A level text book