Paid Whistleblowers and Paid Compliance Programs: Opposite Sides of the Same Coin

Abstract

The phrase “paid whistleblower” conjures up for most people the image of a person “coming in from the cold” to the office of a governmental regulator and receiving a bounty for so doing. In this chapter, I argue that the flip side of the coin (that is, payments to a whistleblower) is the concept of paying people for compliant behaviour as part of their annual performance or compensation review. Why should wewait for really bad events to occur in order to pay people for ethical conduct? To the contrary, a compensation system should recognize and reward compliant behavior. This is not the norm in North America, but should be.