Big Picture
The classic notion of the whistleblower is the little guy – lone, principled and conflicted, fighting a David and Goliath battle against a stony and faceless corporation. Are they heroes? Or are they unscrupulous and out for what they can get?
The term whistleblower is said to have been coined in the 1970s by US activist Ralph Nader to avoid the negative connotations of terms such as ‘informer’ and ‘snitch’, instead invoking the referee in a sports match, blowing the whistle to stop the game when there is unfair play.
No matter how concerned and engaged the general counsel, bad actors are potentially everywhere. So provision of mechanisms and protections for whistleblowers in all industries are an accepted fact of doing business in the 21st century, right? Wrong. Even in 2014, many companies have neither formal whistleblowing policies nor unambiguous reporting lines for serious corporate misconduct issues. The in-house lawyer as the custodian of legal propriety walks an increasingly wobbly tightrope in representing the company’s business interests whilst upholding what is right and fair.
