Ethisphere, an internationally recognized organization in the field of corporate ethics, recently released the results of its benchmark survey on trends in corporate ethics and compliance. The findings demonstrate that companies are making earnest efforts to develop values-driven organizations, but more needs to be done to encourage, embolden and protect those who report misconduct at work.
In healthy organizations, employees are the first line of defense against bad behavior. If witnesses to wrongdoing feel protected enough to come forward swiftly, employers can take meaningful steps to clean up the business. This benefits everyone – company leadership, employees, investors and the public at large.
But Ethisphere’s survey points to a dangerous disconnect between what employees believe they might do, and what they actually do when they observe wrongdoing. While 9 out of 10 employees said they’d be willing to report misconduct, 50% of real witnesses to wrongdoing opt to stay silent. That silence is deafening. And it has to change.
Diving deeper into the survey data, it’s clear that trust is a major barrier to whistleblowing. Significantly, 81% of employees believe that if they reported a concern about unethical conduct, the company would investigate it. Here again, however, we see a disconnect between belief and behavior. Of those who opt not to report misconduct, more than half (52%) chose not to because they doubted employers would take action on their complaint. The data reminds us that companies need to get beyond lip service when it comes to combating wrongdoing. Particularly troubling, even when employees are aware of their employer’s anti-retaliation policy, more than one-fifth doubt it will actually be enforced.
Most concerning, and consistent with what we see so often in our Whistleblower & Retaliation practice, an astonishing 59% of respondents who would not report misconduct cite fear of retaliation for their silence. In a world where there is little faith in corrective actions and great fear in retaliatory ones, risk reigns supreme.
‘Speak-up culture isn’t just a metric to monitor. It’s a daily practice that lives or dies in the moment when an employee chooses if they will raise their hand—and in how the organization responds when they do.’
2025 Ethics & Compliance Report:
Program Trends & Employee Perceptions
Employers need to take these findings seriously, and tailor their compliance programs and policies to suit. They are on notice: While corporate compliance breaks down, government whistleblower programs are running smoothly and at full steam. By way of example, an individual reporting securities violations to the SEC – who can report anonymously if working with an attorney – may secure 10-30% of monetary sanctions collected in an enforcement action with penalties exceeding $1 million. For a sense of scope, in the last fiscal year, the SEC paid out over $255 million in awards, bringing the total paid to SEC whistleblowers to more than $2.2 billion since the SEC Whistleblower Program’s inception. And the tips continue to pour in…nearly 25,000 last year.
While we are heartened by so many data points in Ethisphere’s report, we are left wondering why, in an already uncertain economic environment, employers continue to overlook the benefits of a credible ethical culture. Investors, employees, customers and the public at large need to trust that companies aren’t just crafting policies and handbooks, but are creating robust and credible environments of action.
