Facilitating Anonymous Whistleblowing

This paper considers the role of facilitators of anonymous whistleblowing, which provide an important opportunity for whistleblowers to place their concerns in the public domain where the power holders can be held accountable, without necessarily revealing their own identity. Are these facilitators successful in their attempts to assist whistleblowers to get attention focused on their message? Companies and government departments often employ anonymous hotlines as a means of encouraging employees to disclose suspicions of perceived wrongdoing internally. This practice tends to blur the distinction between whistleblowing and informing in the eyes of employees: is the aim to establish whether employees are defrauding the organization, or to enable employees to expose that the organization’s perceived unethical behaviour? Other facilitators to be considered are ombudspersons, the media and WikiLeaks.