Posts Tagged ‘anti-retaliation’
DoJ Dinged on Whistleblower Protection
Radical Compliance is never one to engage in schadenfreude, but for whatever this may be worth: the Justice Department has been dinged by its own inspector general for sloppy whistleblower protection efforts with its third parties. The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, sent a memo to senior Justice Department officials last week warning that the department…
Read MoreMore Tales of Retaliation Against Audit & Compliance
Alas, it’s time for more tales of retaliation against compliance and audit professionals. Several have streaked across my radar screen lately and we should always take note of them, since commitment to doing the right thing deserves praise and organizations trying to squelch speaking up should be called out. We begin with the Dallas Independent…
Read MoreCompliance Under Fire: Two More Tales
Oh dear: we have two fresh tales of compliance officers suffering dire professional consequences for doing their jobs. Not the best way to welcome the Thanksgiving holiday, but the compliance community needs to stick together and study troubling corporate behavior when we see it. First is news from Australia. Westpac, the second-largest bank in the…
Read MoreSome Points on Why People Stay Silent
Ethics and compliance officers often need to consider the psychology of whistleblower retaliation and the culture of silence around corporate misconduct. Why do groups of people tolerate things they know are wrong? Why do people punish those who sound the alarm, rather than join them in defense of what’s right? As you ponder those questions,…
Read MoreCAE Dodges Assassination Attempt
Well here’s a risk one rarely sees in our line of work: the chief audit executive of the South African Broadcasting Corp. dodged a shooting in Johannesburg over the weekend that the company is calling an assassination attempt. Thami Zikode, head of audit at SABC since 2017, left his office in the Auckland Park neighborhood…
Read MorePodcast: CCOs Facing Retaliation
Today we return to a subject of high importance to compliance officers: how to handle retaliation against yourselves — which, for better or worse, is a reality in this line of work. Several weeks ago I wrote a post recounting the tales of the compliance professionals now suing their former employers, alleging retaliation after those…
Read MoreRetaliation Against CCOs: Three Tales
Compliance officers deal with claims of whistleblower retaliation all the time. Today we’re going to recap three examples much closer to home — compliance officers pressing claims of retaliation themselves. We hear those stories from time to time: a compliance officer reports some concern to management (otherwise known as doing your job), and management responds…
Read MoreCBS, Part II: It Gets Worse
We have an update to our first post about CBS earlier this week, examining the mistakes CBS and its chief compliance officer made while handling a whistleblower retaliation claim from actress Eliza Dushku. Dushku has now elaborated on the harassment she experienced on set for the show Bull, and her tale makes the judgment of…
Read MoreCBS Compliance, Culture Under Fire
Ethics & compliance officers may want to watch the latest corporate governance scandal unfolding at CBS, where the broadcaster’s chief compliance officer seems to have played the starring role in a whistleblower retaliation claim that cost CBS $9.5 million — and reminds us, yet again, how perilous it can be to subordinate ethics and compliance…
Read MoreAbout That Record New Whistleblower Award…
Take a moment to be dazzled by the $83 million whistleblower award the Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Monday, but spend more time poring over the details and footnotes the SEC included in its award order. Compliance officers may not like the implications of what you find there. The $83 million award was divided…
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