The Office of Special Counsel is a federal agency that is supposed to handle whistleblowing complaints of federal employees.  It’s supposed to be the investigator for and of the federal government.  Instead, the head of the Office has been under investigation for about two years for, among other things, failing to investigate whistleblowing claims and retaliating against whistleblowers.  On May 6, 2008, the FBI raided the agency’s DC office (as well as other agency offices), seized computers, issued search warrants, and tainted even further the integrity of the Office of Special Counsel.

Many companies now have “compliance officers” or “compliance departments” to, more or less, do what the Office of Special Counsel was set up to do:  make sure there is overall compliance with the law and ethics policies and investigate any alleged violations.  To have any chance of doing that job, the compliance officer or the head of the department must be above reproach.  Once his/her integrity is called into question, the office or the department might as well not exist.

All organizations should study what’s happened with the Office of Special Counsel.  It’ll help you strengthen what you have in place to enforce compliance and uphold ethics policies.