Dangerous Silence: What Employees Won’t Tell You, Why, and What You Can Do About It

Gary Edwards, Principal, Ethos International

According to recent research by the Ethics Resource Center and KPMG, the amount of misconduct employees witness is rising at the same time that their willingness to report misconduct is falling, creating a dangerous, widening gap between the bad news you know and deal with and the problems you don’t know about and, therefore, cannot fix. Are these headed for involuntary disclosure to prosecutors or the press? Why won’t employees report misconduct to their managers, ethics and compliance offices, or hotlines?

Researchers at the Harvard Business School report that their in-depth examination of a technology company revealed that half of its employees not only would not report bad news, but a similar percentage wouldn’t even share their own good ideas about how to improve the firm’s own products and services. Why?

In this concurrent session, discuss the causes of such dangerous silence, as well as new approaches to building communities of trust.