Opinion  

FCA's faux pas over whistleblower is bad for confidence

Simoney Kyriakou

Simoney Kyriakou

Earlier this month we published an opinion piece from David Pirrie, who argued that, in a risk-versus-reward scenario, many potential whistleblowers "may decide it is not worth pursuing and choose to let it go", should the complaint go nowhere or they risk being wrong.

Add to that the fear that their emails might get passed, unredacted, to the very teams or organisations they are blowing the whistle on, and it is difficult to convince people to keep calling out wrong behaviour. 

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Pirrie suggets incentivising compliance officers, turning compliance "into a market itself with big money rewards for whistle-blowers who find the criminals and no risk of losing their jobs if they get it wrong".

It's an interesting proposition, but doesn't go far enough: people have to be certain their identities will be protected - so why not enable a system that allows this to be done?

Otherwise you end up with a situation where fewer people call out the bad actors - and we all know where that leads.