Listen more carefully to those who blow the whistle

In February 2017 a group of seven consultant doctors had to write a letter to a fellow member of their medical team at the Countess of Chester Hospital. “We would like to apologise for any inappropriate comments that may have been made during this difficult period … We are very sorry for the stress and upset that you have experienced in the last year.”
Those with a taste for true crime will, of course, know that the recipient of this letter was Lucy Letby, a nurse who by this stage had killed seven babies and attempted to kill a further seven. We still do not know why this woman from an ordinary, stable background became a murderer and there are some who refuse to believe that she is one.
This week Unmasking Lucy Letby, a book by two BBC journalists, Jonathan Coffey and Judith Moritz, both of whom sat through the lengthy trial, was published and I am not sure that it sheds much further light on her psychology. It does, however, grippingly and in detail describe a breakdown in trust between different and competing factions within the hospital. It should become required reading for any manager.
On the one hand there was a group of consultant doctors who increasingly came to suspect that the coincidence of babies unexpectedly dying and Letby being on duty was too great to ignore. Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns in July 2015 after only three deaths. On the other, there was a group of senior managers determined not to consider that one of their own as a potential serial killer. “Their priority seemed to be simply to move on,” Coffey and Moritz write, ending in the absurd situation of the consultants having to apologise to Letby.
The book is timely because it is the latest work highlighting how managers at many British institutions seem to have become adept at brushing workplace scandals under the carpet rather than listening to whistleblowers, however uncomfortable their message may be. The Post Office is the most egregious case but the BBC also could have avoided the worst of the Huw Edwards scandal if it had properly investigated some early complaints about his behaviour and its initial lack of curiosity about possible bullying at Strictly Come Dancing appears to have been a case of protecting the brand rather than listening to the complainant.
Last month Ethics at Work was published: a triennial look at the state of corporate behaviour around the globe. It is put together by an organisation called the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) and the headline figures were fairly stark: 25 per cent of the 12,000 employees surveyed reported that they had been aware of misconduct or illegal activity at work in the past year, up from 18 per cent in 2021. Asked if “my organisation has an unethical culture”, 26 per cent said yes, up from 18 per cent three years ago.
“It is not an exaggeration to say ethics is in crisis,” Patrick Daws said at its publication. He is the group ethics and compliance officer at Mott MacDonald, an engineering consultancy and one of the report’s sponsors. He was referencing not just the Post Office and the BBC but also the exam cheating scandal at KPMG Netherlands, which resulted in the accountancy firm being fined £20 million.
Has there really been a breakdown in corporate honesty in the past three years? Has working from home led to the disintegration of a collegiate atmosphere? The report suggests, in fact, that those working from home are less likely to complain about wrongdoing. I suppose that if you are not sharing an office with colleagues or managers you will not notice if they are fiddling their expenses or bullying a junior. In the UK workplace bullying seems to be the most common problem.
What has certainly happened is that people appear more willing to speak up. In the UK there has been a leap in those willing to call out illegality or poor behaviour. Of those people who said they were aware of wrongdoing, 63 per cent said they were willing to speak up versus 51 per cent back in 2012.
That is partly because each new generation entering the workforce tends to become less tolerant of what an older generation once considered to be standard practice. Much of this is to be welcomed: the casual misogyny and quotidian intimidation that were common when I started work are thankfully no longer accepted with a shrug.
This has not, though, led to an era of exemplary ethics. Fraud is not falling, harassment is not in retreat and whistleblowers are still being ignored.
The IBE believes that the answer is for more companies to have clearly defined corporate ethical policies and clear guidelines as to what is and is not acceptable practice: when gifts need to be declared, what represents a conflict of interest, how employees can flag concerns without fear of retribution.
You would hope that most of this might be common sense but as Will Clayton, partner at Constantine Law, which specialises in employment law, said: “In my experience the single common denominator in all workplace disputes is poor communication so I’m a big fan of anything that businesses can do to improve communication, especially about what standards of conduct are expected from their employees.”
The problem is that the number of employment tribunals seems to mount in line with the number of corporate ethics policies published, invariably entitled “Doing the Right Thing”.
The policies are easy to write but they are hard to follow when, as is often the case, whistleblowers can come across as causing trouble. Great companies and organisations, however, need to actively encourage the doubters who are willing to put their hand up and say: are we sure this is okay? Because often it is not.