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Considerable reliance is placed upon whistleblowers in protecting assets and detecting and avoiding financial crime. Despite this, they suffer persecution and often dismissal, and find they are abandoned by the organisations they thought they were helping, and by society at large whose wider interests they imagined they were serving. There are some signs of recognition of the contribution they make and the injustices they suffer, but equally there continues to be opposition. Internal audit whistleblowers are highlighted in case studies to indicate the ambivalent situation they find themselves in, and to highlight the problems that any employee may face. There is an urgent need to provide legal and other protections to whistleblowers.

Valid acts of whistleblowing – employees informing on dubious practices in the workplace – is increasingly being viewed in a favourable light, with statutory protection following. Examples of whistleblowing are presented, including education and disaster situations which, being life‐threatening, have immediate perceived value. Provides criteria for valid forms of whistleblowing, the formulation of codes of ethics for whistleblowers, and suggests the way forward for the quality profession, who may be assisted through whistleblowing.

The failure of the Enron Corporation in late 2001, apart from signalling the largest corporate bankruptcy in the USA, has also thrown up a myriad of questions about the effectiveness of contemporary accounting, auditing and corporate governance practices. There are strong historical antecedents for distrust of the corporation, latterly represented in extreme form by the anti‐capitalists. The causes of the Enron failure and the immediate response in the USA are outlined. This is followed by the response in the UK among the accountancy bodies, and the results of a comprehensive survey to assess the impact of Enron. This then leads to a comprehensive series of lessons to be learnt in the form of recommendations under the headings of serving the public interest, accounting and financial reporting, auditing, corporate governance, and education.

Disaster inquiries regularly contain a sad litany of what went wrong, procedures bypassed and ignored, and undue risks taken. It is clear in many of these cases that there were individuals in the know, who may have spoken up, but been over‐ruled or silenced. Some more persistent individuals decide to speak up external to the organisation, and hence become whistleblowers. Their efforts, although virtually by definition in the public interest, have not always been well received, certainly by their employers, and the agencies to whom they resorted, while pleased to have received their information, have invariably not reciprocated by offering employment protection, or even upholding confidentiality. Disaster case studies are presented involving a variety of industries from the nuclear power to the petroleum, aircraft, space and oil industries. The stresses on the whistleblower are indicated, one being the controversy remaining over their role, with opposition from some business leaders. The law offers first line protection, although experience in the USA suggests that this is insufficient in itself. In the more unified and compact jurisdiction of the UK, new legislation, coupled with political will, seems likely to produce a more effective regime. Organisations need to internalise whistleblowing as part of their natural systems and procedures, and codes of practice assist in this regard, as long as they are more than window‐dressing. Countries less advanced in their thinking and legislation are more at risk and, given the global consequences of the likes of an environmental disaster, need to be regarded as international pariahs.

Of all the relationships that auditors enter into, that with employees seems relatively neglected, and with the trade unions virtually absent from consideration. During the anti‐union period of Thatcher and Reagan this may have been explicable, but now that a more balanced role for trade unions is much more accepted by employers and governments, it is high time to give this relationship more attention. This is especially the case since research into the behavioural impact of internal audit tends to be negative, and show no improvement over time. This means that each generation or wave needs to make renewed effort to deal with this problem. The European model of corporate governance has long accorded a more significant role to the trade union.

Review of the literature, especially research findings on the behavioural aspects of an audit. Relevant law and practice is considered.

As internal audit charters become the norm, trade unions are a significant stakeholder to be envisaged, and the same could apply to the letter of external audit engagement. Equally the trade unions themselves might welcome a concord with representative bodies of internal auditors.

Nobody has ever considered the interrelationship of trade unions and internal audit. This is an important stakeholder relationship.

Total quality management is both an aspirational and an inspirational concept with elements of the philosophical, quasi religious and qualitative juxtaposed with the empirical and quantified. In the audit society there are many voices clamouring for recognition and acclaim. With the possibility that we are being over‐audited, and the ambiguity of evaluative reports on the various competing contenders, the time ahead will be both challenging and interesting.

The Institute of Personnel and Development has long recognized the impact that small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises make in encouraging innovation in human resources management. It was, therefore, perfectly consistent that as part of their major initiative to assess the current status and future direction of personnel management, they would wish to research the SME sector. The researchers, part of the charity of the Professional Development Foundation, sampled over 300 companies, and this article reflects the findings relating to internal, corporate communications. Not unnaturally, SMEs favour more informal modes of communication, although breakdowns in this, plus other pressures, invoke the need to introduce some degree of formality. The research themes emerging are further explored in ten case studies which represent a representative cross‐section of SME activity.

Corporate governance has emerged from obscurity into being a mainstream topic which there is a need to know, as well as being incorporated into industrial and commercial training courses. There has been a plethora of reports starting in the USA and spreading to the UK, whose influence, example and model have spread throughout the world. Some main forces explaining the provenance of corporate governance are provided before discussing the US Treadway and COSO Reports. Concerns with business ethics also are a factor. These reports in turn influenced the Cadbury Report and the “sons of Cadbury” the most recent and most significant being the recent Turnbull Report. This impacts much more on grass roots practices than the others, and its messages therefore need to be absorbed into training courses.