Raising the bar for whistleblowing

Earlier this year, Deloitte launched the Asia-Pacific Conduct Watch Survey, gathering insights into prevailing organisational attitudes and capabilities concerning whistleblowing in the region. With over 500 respondents from diverse organisations across Asia-Pacific, it was encouraging that 93% of respondents either have a whistleblower programme in place or are about to implement one.

In July, Deloitte Forensic New Zealand hosted clients from across the country so they could hear from our guest panellists working in senior public and private sector roles. The panel drew on their own whistleblowing experiences and shared various programme-related challenges.

Some noteworthy findings that were discussed by the panels included:

• The most common challenge faced by respondents in relation to whistle-blower programmes is concern from employees regarding the independence of the reporting process, closely followed by a lack of employee awareness of the programme.
• One-quarter of respondents indicated their reporting channels are not made available to third parties, even though contractors fall within the definition of a discloser according to the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022.
• Nearly one-third of respondents indicated their organisations do not evaluate the effectiveness of their whistleblower programme. Among those that do, the majority gauge effectiveness solely based on the number of whistleblower ‘reports’.

Our panellists emphasised the importance of having a robust whistle-blower mechanism in place, alongside palatable policies and procedures. However, they made it clear that these measures on their own are insufficient. Organisations need to enhance awareness through appropriate communication strategies that include endorsement and commitment to integrity from management. This requires ongoing commitment and effort, with consistent reinforcement and demonstration of high integrity by its leaders - to cement a healthy culture of speaking up.

The survey provides a timely reminder that providing an effective, trusted multi-channel disclosure mechanism to your people is really important, alongside deliberate efforts to raise and maintain awareness from the people who need to feel comfortable sharing serious concerns they have.

We encourage you to reflect on your own workplace and assess how well you demonstrate a positive ‘speaking up’ culture.

Conduct Watch is Deloitte’s owned and operated, 24x7 secure and seamless, end-to-end whistleblowing solution. It helps organisations accelerate how they identify, respond to, resolve, and report on fraud and other misconduct.