While there is organizations such as the United States Department of Labor (DOL), and laws in place such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the United States Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (FSGO) which protects whistleblowers in the private sector. Many employees still fear for their jobs due to direct or indirect threats from their employers or the other parties involved. In an effort to overcome those fears, in 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was put forth to provide great incentive to whistleblowers. For example, if a whistleblower gave information which could be used to legally recover over one million dollars; then they could receive ten to thirty percent of it.
Despite government efforts to help regulate the private sector, the employees must still weigh their options. They either expose the company and stand the moral and ethical high ground; or expose the company, lose their job, their reputation and potentially the ability to be employed again. According to a study at the University of Pennsylvania, out of three hundred whistleblowers studied, sixty nine percent of them had foregone that exact situation; and they were either fired or were forced to retire after taking the ethical high ground. It is outcomes like that which makes it all that much harder to accurately track how prevalent whistleblowing is in the private sector. [1]