Posts Tagged ‘whistleblowers’
Finally, SEC Voting on Whistleblower Reforms
The Securities and Exchange Commission will vote next week on reforms to its whistleblower rewards program, more than two years after the reforms were first proposed, and which still have the potential to complicate your pursuit of a strong speak-up culture. The vote is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 2. In theory compliance professionals will be…
Read MoreA Must-Read on Whistleblower Retaliation
Anyone who cares about a strong ethical culture and protection of whistleblowers — which should be all compliance professionals everywhere — should read a column in the Washington Post this weekend written by Alexander Vindman, the national security officer driven out of the military because his whistleblower report led to President Trump’s impeachment. Whistleblower retaliation…
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 MoreStudy: Second-Hand Reports More Reliable
Some news that’s both useful to corporate compliance officers and totally relevant to our political drama in Washington: fresh research shows that whistleblower reports based on second-hand information tend to be more reliable than those from first-hand reporters. Moreover, second-hand reports are more likely to be about accounting or business integrity issues; and the more…
Read MoreBig: Senators Intro Whistleblower Fix
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation to undo the damage of the Digital Realty Trust decision from the Supreme Court last year, which said that employee whistleblowers must first report their allegations to the SEC if they want to claim whistleblower protections under the Dodd-Frank Act. This legislation from the Senate follows similar…
Read MoreTrump, Ukraine, and Whistleblower Allegations
Allegations of misconduct by the CEO are the most difficult issue an audit or compliance professional will ever face. That’s why we should study the latest scandal in Washington, that President Trump implored his counterpart in Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden. It’s a fascinating glimpse into just how difficult investigations of CEO…
Read MoreWhat Drives ‘Open Secrets’
So there I was this week, attending the annual conference of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Texas. ACFE had asked me to moderate a keynote interview with Tyler Shultz, the immensely brave employee who endured personal and professional pressure to blow the whistle on Theranos. You might already know the tale. Shultz, 28,…
Read MoreLessons in Whistleblower Protection
One last dispatch from the HCCA conference this week: I dropped into a discussion led by a whistleblower, who discovered a $2 million embezzlement fraud while working as a university professor. Her story was gripping and vivid — and raised several powerful points about how people, compliance functions, and large enterprises should all work together.…
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…
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