7 Missteps That Take Whistleblower Crises from Bad to Worse

Among the more consistent monikers to be identified with the past 10 years, “The Decade of the Whistleblower” may not be too far afield as a top contender.

High-profile whistleblower cases have spanned all sectors, from National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden who revealed in 2013 how the government gathers intel on private citizens; to the #MeToo Movement avalanche of sexual harassment / assault exposés of powerful men in Hollywood, sports, academia and politics; to high-profile business cases such as Theranos (Tyler Shultz worked with The Wall Street Journal to reveal CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ bogus blood-testing product claims) and Wells Fargo (multiple bank employees reported millions of fake customer accounts, with some staff facing overt retaliation by company management), to name just a few.

Even now, a U.S. Presidential impeachment trial will presumably take place in the U.S. Senate in the New Year, prompted by an anonymous whistleblower report by a U.S. Intelligence official.

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 2018 “was a record-breaking year for the SEC whistleblower program,” which “received more whistleblower tips in FY 2018 than in any other previous year.” The SEC's 2019 report -- issued in November 2019 -- stated that "the Commission received its second largest number of whistleblower tips in a fiscal year and made its third largest award to date—a $37 million award..."

Amid the watershed moments and media hoopla generated from individuals who publicly called out bad behaviors -- ranging from the questionable to the unethical to the illegal, all from the vantage point of being an “insider” to an organization or industry -- it astounds me how little is known or understood about the mindset of whistleblowers.

After all, there is a reason why whistleblowers do what they do.

“Whistleblowers are our conscience,” according to the Ethics & Compliance Initiative.

Yet leaders / management teams who face a whistleblower report rarely manage whistleblowers and their concerns in an informed and enlightened way – instead, resorting to an automatic stance of whistleblower-as-enemy.

Many whistleblowers don’t start out wanting to be management’s enemy at all – in fact, quite the opposite.

They typically want to be part of a productive solution to a documented problem . . . particularly when the whistleblower makes concerted attempts to report their concerns privately and internally within the organization first, before ever going public with them.

However, initial dismissive carelessness and disrespect are often followed by outright hostility, fear and demonization in how leaders and management teams perceive and treat whistleblowers and their concerns.

These over-reactions only serve to exacerbate whistleblower's concerns with management's knee-jerk responses, overly defensive postures, and – at the more egregious end of the spectrum – new corrupt behavior on top of prior corrupt behavior in attempted cover-ups and smear campaigns.

Granted, not all whistleblowers are “the good guys.” 

Back in the early 1990s, for example, Marc Whitacre became an FBI informant as a whistleblower against his employer, Archer Daniels Midland, on an alleged price-fixing scheme – only for it to be revealed that Whitacre was on the take to the tune of millions and ended up doing prison time himself. 

More present-day, I myself am not a fan of people like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning, for a whole host of reasons tied to their tactics and the ongoing threat to our nation’s security resulting from their actions.

But in large measure, whistleblowers expose corruption and wrong-doing for a reason*… and believe me, it’s not about angling for that next raise or promotion or to make new buddies around the watercooler. 

*Footnote: Government whistleblowers can receive “significant” cash payouts / taxpayer-funded settlements for reporting wrongdoing by government officials.

To the contrary, most whistleblowers put everything on the line...

. . . their jobs, livelihoods, reputations, relationships (some even face career blacklisting or death threats) – to take what they feel is a stand for the right thing to do, most often in dealing not with a single one-off incident, but rather, with far more persistent and systemic patterns of corruption or incompetence, which often reveal themselves to be entrenched at a cultural level. 

Whistleblowers face all kinds of negative outcomes, not the least of which is the organization -- whose integrity they may be trying to fight for, mind you – essentially turning against them, vis-à-vis a management team who might do anything to discredit them from their bully pulpit, for no other reason than to save face and maintain their self-serving status quo (i.e., power).

So why do whistleblowers do it?

Why do they take the leap to "go public," which invariably results in unpredictable, unpleasant journeys, with no assurance of a satisfactory outcome to correct observed wrongdoing and to hold accountable those who committed it?

Quite a bit of research abounds on this topic. 

A comprehensive 2018 study in the United Kingdom focusing on the healthcare arena and the problems of organizations’ inappropriate whistleblower response yields expansive insights for anyone truly interested in exploring whistleblowing as an organizational / cultural phenomenon.

I’ve been a whistleblower myself (and continue to be), to expose major compliance failures in my profession by the very people who’ve assumed industry leadership positions in the U.S. and who are in charge of upholding compliance expectations in service to that profession – whether ethical, legal or via other standards of conduct or practice.

In that experience, I’ve learned a lot through self-reflection as well as by studying the apparent strategies and tactics of adversaries.

And from that experience, this list is what I would include as universal foul-ups that consistently take an organization’s whistleblower problem from bad to worse:

1. Dysfunction Junction

The all-out failure of an organization to establish and manage an open, transparent, trustworthy and non-threatening process for employees, volunteers or other stakeholders to report concerns of ethical or legal misconduct or other wrongdoing is – in this day and age – about as fixable a problem as it gets.

Yet it’s amazing how many organizations ignore or otherwise irretrievably bungle this essential element in fielding concerns in a way that builds trust with would-be whistleblowers (thereby helping ramp-down underlying concerns) instead of destroying it (thereby escalating ramp-up of concerns and an urgency for satisfactory answers). 

So-called processes that are stilted in singular service to an organization’s ability to exert its own power to stifle information and to subvert whistleblowers themselves – rather than address valid concerns at hand – are clearly built on bad faith. 

And it is indeed the foundation of bad faith that underscores a level of corruption, clearly indicative of “grievance” processes that operate under cover of cronyism, false investigations and self-exonerations.

All three of these elements provide the perfect Molotov cocktail that managements invariably hurl into the faces of whistleblowers who dare question them, based on the misguided notion that petty explosions will kill the desire for inquiry . . . as opposed to adding fuel to the flame of investigative demands.   

2. Spin: The Non-Answer Answer

“We’ve already answered that question.” 

It’s an insult to others’ intelligence – particularly for a whistleblower who may actually know more than the management team thinks he or she knows (or may know more than even the management team knows) – when leaders posture as though they are cooperating with or being responsive to serious questions about potential wrongdoing, when in fact, they are engaged in nothing but spin.

This particular issue is compounded when leaders seeking to thwart a whistleblower report actually work within a profession whose chief universal “bad rap” is that very behavior: spin (a.k.a., engaging in non-communicative obfuscation techniques to derail a legitimate inquiry).

There are few other postures that scream more loudly in their subtext, “We’re guilty as sin, but we'll shout ‘Squirrel!’ and pray you look the other way.” 

But of course, whistleblowers almost never look the other way, because by the time a whistleblower actually assumes "whistleblower" status in going public with their concerns, they are too vested in the issue and, even at this fairly early stage of being subjected to management's initial spin acrobatics, they have too much skin in the game to accept management's empty and meaningless blather. 

For the whistleblower, it's now become a full-on matter of principle -- an incredibly powerful motivating force, which management teams are foolish to underestimate.

And, more often than not, the more engaged whistleblowers become in paying attention to what’s occurring in plain sight, the more they uncover even more problematic behaviors that validate every basis of their originating concerns.

3. Good Cop / Bad Cop

When a management team resolves that a whistleblower is serious and won’t go away simply because management summarily informed them they've been dismissed, it’s time to pull out the big guns, which are techniques 3 through 7 on this list, although not necessarily in this order or inclusive of all. 

My personal experience as a whistleblower was inclusive of each, and “Good Cop / Bad Cop” was the first newfangled response I encountered after management’s Spin Cycle proved ineffective with me.

In this scenario, a member of the management team – perhaps one who has a prior, positive friendship and/or working relationship with the whistleblower – assumes the mantle of “Good Cop,” seeking to disarm the whistleblower and sweet-talk them into retreat, perhaps by even apologizing privately for the reported misconduct committed and/or defended by one or more “Bad Cops” on the management team (which therein acknowledges that the misconduct actually happened that management earlier tried to spin their way out of being accountable for, which, further, inadvertently lays bare management’s level of dishonesty and duplicity). 

Good Cops may work diligently over weeks or even months, appearing to be on the side of the whistleblower with both empathy and sympathy, all the while, seeking to lull the whistleblower into complacency or silence . . . which is, after all, the ultimate management team goal. 

If the whistleblower appears to reject silence as an option (such as demanding accountability for wrong-doing that has now been openly acknowledged as having occurred), the Good Cop may then artfully transition at some point into Step 4 . . .

4. “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Good Cops who ascertain that their whistleblower cannot be persuaded or rationalized to stand mute will likely pivot to Sub-Option B… and that’s to engage in some deal-making.

The basis of the deal as presented to the whistleblower from the Good Cop may be,

“Yes! Thank you so very much, Dear Whistleblower, for bringing to our attention areas where we can improve.

You know, we could really use the talent, diligence and insights of someone like you on our team… so how would you like to chair a task force or serve on a committee to tackle this very issue?”

If a whistleblower is motivated by pure ego -- or, if the subtext of the Good Cop's offer is a quid-pro-quo pathway for the whistleblower to have his or her reputation restored or re-validated by management among a larger group of colleagues (after management's initial handiwork in trying to discredit the whistleblower) -- then this tactic might work.  

But whistleblowers who are principle-driven will easily connect the dots between 1) having been dismissed and lied to in the early stages of their complaint process (particularly with the private admissions of such during Good Cop’s honeymoon-phase) . . . with now, 2) an even more duplicitous attempt to embed the whistleblower into the management team’s own power structure, so that the whistleblower runs the risk later of unwittingly becoming party to the misconduct that they know is taking place.

After all, there is no better way to force a whistleblower’s silence than to point a finger back and threaten to expose them. 

Whistleblowers who wisely reject “the deal” – particularly in the face of a management team that refuses to assume accountability – then graduate to a whole new level of targeting by management, as Good Cop exits the scene (of yet another crime) and reports back to the larger management team, “Well… I did everything I could. No more Mr. Nice Guy."

5. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

At this point, the management team may start to panic. 

Contending with a whistleblower whom they can’t directly manipulate and control poses a new kind of critical threat, and so management may undertake a messaging offensive to try to convince their larger stakeholder group of employees, volunteers, investors / donors, media and other audiences, of just how ethical and upstanding management is.

Management may start generating a bumper crop of white papers, op-eds, other public statements, enhanced organizational ethics-code lip service, new honors / awards (conveniently presented to management's own culprits and cronies), or even finger-pointing expeditions at easy targets – like controversial political figures – to spotlight their own presumed ethics credentials on any mishmash of issues or trends.

6. Demonization & Victimhood

In fairly short order, the next step for management is to play The Victim Card.  

Management claims the whistleblower is just a bad apple . . . that they’re “uncivil,” “hurtful,” and “mean-spirited,” while painting a picture of the management team as a pure-as-the-driven-snow Babe in the Woods, that's “surprised” and “disappointed” by the whistleblower’s “unfortunate choices.”

At this point, the gloves are off.

There really is no reversing course for a management team that delves into such levels of dishonesty, abhorrent conduct and purposely deceptive messaging.

There can be no reconciliation; no coming back to the negotiating table (what is there left to negotiate?).

For the whistleblower – for whom a fight for principle, truth and integrity was the first and only prime motivator to begin with – there likely is no backing down at this point. 

To the contrary, the whistleblower is now motivated anew to expose any and all corrupt decision-making, policies and behaviors, particularly after being on the receiving end of a highly orchestrated smear campaign, which should be disproved.

7. Silent Treatment

Beware of dead calms, because that’s usually when the tornado hits.

Abdication of any communication process most certainly transpires when – at the end of their own rope with which they’ve slowly hung themselves – management finally decides to take their own legal counsel’s advice and resort to their right to remain silent, since nearly everything they say at this point serves to incriminate them further . . . particularly if there is a continuous drip-drip-drip of fresh revelations about new episodes of misconduct coming to light on a fairly routine basis.

At long last, will the larger organization finally undertake a cultural overhaul in its leadership mentality? Will they begin enforcing accountability among their own team members for ethical misconduct or other wrongdoing? 

Maybe. 

But minus a 100-percent turnover in current leadership (and their hand-picked successors), likely not.

Culture changes won't occur without a fight by current management, who will dig their heels in as far as the bedrock, in order to subvert any reforms that would otherwise acknowledge their own prior dishonesty, starting back with their Spin Game in Step 1.

If a conflict of this sort has continued not for months but for years, then what’s likely at hand is deep-rooted cultural rot in the organization.

Depending on the size and the scope of the organization, it may never be rooted out – or, if it is, it may take decades for the culture to be purified to at least basic ethical functionality.

After all, it likely took decades of a slow, downhill slide for the organization's management team to devolve to these depths to begin with. 

Cultural change can be unbearably slow, so the whistleblower’s revised mantra may likely entail continuous exposure of documented wrongdoing, in order to hasten the process of what they hope will be positive change (however naïve this hope may be).

Management teams and whistleblowers alike can avoid these harmful scenarios and outcomes . . . but not if either side is operating from a foundation of self-serving, dishonorable intent. 

Organizations can learn more about developing a credible, effective Ethics & Compliance mandate and operational support structure by downloading a free toolkit from ECI. 

Mary Beth West, MPRCA, is a public relations senior strategist with Fletcher PR. She can be followed on Twitter at @marybethwest.