Investigating whistleblower reports: Is ISO right that impartiality replaces the need for independence?

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In a chapter of Yearbook 2021 for Global Ethics, Compliance & Integrity (Makowicz, Ed.), titled “ISO/DIS 37002-Whistleblowering Management Systems – A Best-practice Approach,” by Michael Kayser, he discusses an ISO standard for whistleblowing systems.??In the past I have found some of the work by ISO in the compliance area to be problematical. Sometimes it seems as if the product is designed, at least to some extent, to generate work for consultants. The drafting tends to be unnecessarily complicated, and some points are just wrong from a compliance perspective.??For example, the ISO 37001 (Anti-Bribery??Management Systems) definition of “effective” just means you did what you said you were going to do.??But no one in the compliance world would deem a compliance program to be effective merely for doing what was in the program’s plan. If your plan is to train 5000 people, and you get that many to attend but they all sleep through the program, no one could call that “effective.”??For more on this see my article in SSRN,?Joseph E. Murphy, The ISO 37001 anti-corruption compliance program standard: What’s good, what’s bad, and why it matters (2019)?https://tinyurl.com/y6yf8myc

But in this piece the author raises an interesting point:??should the people who investigate a report by a whistleblower be “independent” or “impartial”???ISO thinks the investigator need only be impartial, not independent.??

I can’t recall ever hearing this point raised before.??I believe the ISO drafters are missing an important point here.??“Impartial” is very subjective.??You could ask me to investigate my own boss and I could swear to you that I would be impartial.??Isn’t impartiality more a state of mind than an objective fact???

But what is missing here???My boss could tell me that I am certainly impartial enough, but all the time I would know that he could fire me if he doesn’t like the result.??What is the difference???Independence is more objective, and if someone can fire you who has an interest in the result, then you are not independent. That seems to me much more objective – a question of fact, not opinion. If you control what happens to be I am not independent.???

I would expect an investigator to be impartial and not make judgments until the facts have been determined.??But the person also needs some degree of independence, just as is true for any compliance person. They must be free to speak about their findings and conclusions.?

At the end of the day, the investigator needs to withhold judgment until the investigation is concluded; impartiality is part of being an investigator.??And the person also needs the independence to report the truth without it being suppressed.??So I don’t see any need to choose one over the other.??If the ISO standard does that, then I think it is a mistake.??What do you think???Could a subordinate investigate a boss effectively as long as the person swore they could be impartial???Or does independence matter?

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