That safety is under pressure, but not for the reason often cited.
It is not primarily due to ‘the complexity of the cases’. It is due to how we have structured the role.
We have built a function around words such as: reporting, victim, and accused. And precisely those words have an effect on the brain. They immediately switch the system to the mode of: risk, taking a position, and legal reflex. Even before a conversation has taken place. And the confidential advisor stands right in the middle of this. Not as a facilitator of a conversation, but as part of a process that is already on edge. Then safety for the confidential advisor becomes complicated by definition; that safety is fragile. Not because the role is weak, but because the context often is.
- In many organizations, the position of the confidential advisor is insufficiently embedded and is therefore vulnerable.
- Confidentiality is under pressure, certainly for internal confidential advisors.
- And there is a real risk of career impact or reluctance to continue fulfilling the role.
What you see is that the confidential advisor must bring safety to a system that does not yet organize that safety itself. That is the core issue.
What do you see happening in practice?
- Confidential advisors come into the picture too late. Often only when things have already escalated. While acting earlier could have prevented a great deal.
- Conversations are being replaced by procedures. Organizations simply fire at reports, investigations, and legal processes. Even though experts say that the actual conversation is not being held.
- Trust is lacking before anyone speaks: low willingness to talk is primarily due to fear and a lack of trust.
And there is something interesting there, because the confidential advisor is often seen as the solution, but ends up in an environment where the problem is already stuck.
Three things that reinforce each other:
- The confidential advisor is invisible until things go wrong and then suddenly becomes crucial. That is exactly the wrong way around. Because if you are only visible during escalation, you automatically become part of that escalation.
- We have traded conversation for systems centered on reporting points, procedures, and pathways. But behavior does not change within a system. Behavior changes within interaction, and that interaction has become thin in many organizations.
- Language pushes people into positions from which they cannot escape. As soon as someone becomes a ‘whistleblower’ and someone else a ‘defendant,’ the conversation is essentially already lost. Because then it is no longer about what is at play, but about who is right.
The newspapers often report that confidential advisors come under pressure if they interpret their role too broadly. This is true. There are even recent legal rulings in which confidential advisors are reprimanded if they step outside their role, for example, if they start conducting investigations themselves.
But this is the nuance that is often missing in such reports: the problem is not that the role is interpreted ‘too broadly,’ the problem is that the organization defines the role too narrowly.
For:
- If you only listen, you are a conduit.
- If you only record, you are part of the system.
- But if you start interpreting and signaling, then you enter the field of tension.
On social media, you often read things like ‘assisting the accused,’ but this framing is incorrect. Because if you call someone an ‘accused’:
- You are already within a legal framework;
- A defense mechanism arises;
- And the role of the confidential advisor shifts towards taking sides.
While the core should actually be:
- What happened here?
- What underlies this behavior?
- What is needed to be able to have this conversation?
That does not require ‘assisting’: that requires guiding interaction. And that is something completely different.
Which pitfall should a confidential advisor not fall into?
Staying rigid in your role on paper and thereby becoming irrelevant in practice. Or put another way: you do not become an investigator, but you must not become a passive listening line either.
Other pitfalls:
- Going along with the system: you allow yourself to be positioned as a ‘reporting point’ and thereby lose your influence.
- Being too loyal to the organization or to the person making the report. Both undermine your position.
- Thinking that neutrality is the same as staying silent, whereas you actually need to be able to reflect and interpret.
- Going along with labels without questioning them.
- Thinking that visibility is a risk, whereas invisibility actually creates risk.
- Confusing neutrality with distance.
- Starting to think too highly of yourself.
Finally, the biggest pitfall: allowing yourself to be reduced to a reporting point. Then this happens: you wait for someone to come; you register; you refer them and think you are neutral. But in reality, you have become part of a reactive system.
How can we better safeguard the safety of the confidential advisor?
Not by diminishing the role, but rather by repositioning it: from reporting point to dialogue partner, where contact is standardized.
Not just when problems arise, but precisely before. And not with yet another protocol. That doesn’t work.
What does work (and this is where friction often lies):
- Position the confidential advisor strategically: as part of how the organization views behavior.
- Ensure genuine independence: the availability of external options and clear frameworks.
- Make identifying issues important. Currently, everything is largely geared towards incidents, whereas safety lies precisely in what you see first.
- Normalize the conversation before it escalates. That relieves pressure on both employees and the confidential advisor.
- Actively protect the role through leadership. Not just legally, but culturally.
- Be visible through knowledge and interpretation. Don’t wait for someone to come, but be proactive: share patterns, interpret behavior, and make language open for discussion. Then your role shifts from ‘last resort’ to ‘part of daily work’.
- Work from a proactive prevention rhythm: signaling → interpreting → dialogue → anchoring.
The question is actually not: how do we protect the confidential advisor?
The question is: why do we create a role that is supposed to bring safety in a system that is not yet safe enough itself?
As long as we avoid that question, the confidential advisor remains balancing. And that is precisely where the difference lies between a reactive function and the proactive confidential advisor who brings about change.
