January 10, 2017 - Posts

Independent Study Finds Whistleblowers Spur Companies to Follow the Law

A new study from of the University of Iowa indicates that whistleblowers can be a powerful force in the fight against corporate fraud and wrongdoing. Specifically, the study by Professor Jaron H. Wilde demonstrates, according to the New York Times, that “financial shenanigans at companies decrease markedly in the years after truth tellers come forward with information about wrongdoing inside their operations.”

Of course, whistleblowers face the threat of retaliation, and have to make many tough decisions (to read about those, check out our Part 1 and Part 2 of our six part series on whistleblowing), but there can be little argument that the risks that whistleblowers undertake have an overall positive impact.

Click the image below to read the New York Times article.

Boxes were wheeled into court in 2002 when Arthur Andersen was charged with destroying documents in the Enron investigation. The Sarbanes-Oxley law, a reaction to cases like Enron’s, gave new protection to whistle-blowers. Credit James Nielsen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images