Let’s be honest: by the time someone is forced into the role of whistleblower, the system has already failed.

We romanticise whistleblowers as if they’re symbols of organisational courage. They’re not. They’re symbols of organisational breakdown. And the costs they carry — to their livelihoods, reputations, and mental health — are costs that should never have been outsourced to a single human being in the first place.

Look at the recent Condé Nast situation: several unionised employees were fired after confronting the company’s head of HR about layoffs related to Teen Vogue being folded into Vogue.com. You don’t have to take a side to see the bigger issue. When people feel they can’t raise hard questions without risking their jobs, organisations start governing by fear rather than by intelligence.

And this is where we are as a society:
Instead of building systems that can metabolise conflict, we rely on whistleblowers to detonate it.

That is not a functional strategy. That’s an emergency response.

The healthier alternative isn’t mysterious —it’s just inconvenient and challenging
• Teach people to have Courageous Conversations.
• Build cultures where dissent isn’t a threat.
• Give employees (and leaders) the skills to deliver bad news before it becomes a scandal.
• Stop treating conflict like a liability and start treating it like an asset.

We shouldn’t aspire to create more whistleblowers.
We should aspire to create organisations where whistleblowers have nothing left to blow the whistle about.

That’s what real governance looks like.
That’s what real leadership looks like.

Learn more about my Courageous Conversation training here

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