Protecting and encouraging whistleblowers is now the big governance issue. You can bring in laws like Sarbanes-Oxley but they have a limited impact. In fact, they might even make it worse, something I have explored here.

That's what makes this piece on international best practice for whistleblowing worthwhile reading. It was written by Björn Rohde-Liebenau from RCC Risk Communication Concepts in Hamburg.

It sets out a number of international best practice rules.

These include awareness, creating the widest possible definition of who can be a whistleblower, ensuring that all relevant subjects are covered, establishing clear steps and procedures, making sure there is a balance between internal and external disclosure, confidentiality, anonymity and protection form harassment, not barring information on the sole ground that the disclosure should have been made earlier, setting up a system that allows employees to buy out of participating in potentially illegal activities, sanctions for people blocking information or harassing whistleblowers, management follow-up, staff buy-in and ensuring there is an independent review system.

Hat tip to Paul Secunda at the Workplace Prof blog.