Speak-Up Culture: Why Whistleblower Policies Aren't Enough

I have spoken up a few times in my life. In nearly every instance, nothing good came from it. Different organisations, different policies, different industries. A default response to dismiss it.

In one instance I was asked to turn around a failing regulatory program. I held a confidential conversation with a workstream sponsor to flag performance issues with his team. Two days later, instead of walking into a room to sign an agreed contract extension, I walked in to be told the funding for my role had been removed. A good lesson in not getting the CFO offside!

I have been reading the Senate Inquiry submissions to the KPMG whistleblower affair. Concerns were raised at every level. People were presented with the information and appeared to make deliberate decisions not to challenge, investigate or act.

Before anyone reaches a whistleblower hotline, something else happens. It plays out in the informal system, which is often far more powerful than the formal one (the policy, the hotline, the governance). A set of cultural signals that most people read long before they ever consider using it:
👁️‍🗨️ What happened to the last person who spoke up.
👁️‍🗨️The organisation that talks about integrity but does not walk the talk.
👁️‍🗨️The mechanisms and functions that appear to protect you but instead exist to protect the institution and executives.

Boards and executives need to sit with a harder question than whether their whistleblower policy is compliant.
❓What does it actually feel like to raise a concern here?
❓Are they engaged with, or are they quietly managed out of the room?
❓Are they seen as exercising sound judgment or as creating a problem?

These are the proxies for whether your formal mechanism will ever be used with confidence because people are extraordinarily good at reading the room.
🕶️ They observe what is rewarded and what is punished.
🕶️They watch what leadership does when it is uncomfortable, and they calibrate accordingly.

The decision not to speak up is rarely made in a moment. It is made slowly, through a hundred small signals.

A healthy speak-up culture makes the organisation safer. Without it, the internal environment becomes more dangerous and the external exposure larger. Problems that cannot be spoken about internally run the risk of surfacing in the media, or with a Senator.

Today, KPMG Australia announced leadership changes, the appointment of its first independent Chair, and an external review of its whistleblower handling. These are necessary steps. Governance restructures address what was visible, the informal system and the culture take much longer.

⚠️ The question for every leader and every board: would the people in your organisation, reading your signals, watching what you do ... would they trust you?