Marshaling Integrity - George Wratney

These excerpts are taken from our interview of George Wratney, a former corporate ombudsman.

The function of the office rests on two pillars: one is neutrality; and one is confidentiality. The neutrality part is that we assure employees who call us or write us or otherwise contact us—knock on the door or trip us in the hall—that we don’t act as their agents, and we don’t act as agents for management. We’re a communications channel, and again I have to emphasize the word, alternate communications channel, for employees to raise issues in confidence.

Ombuds are not part of the management team of a company; they don’t investigate; they’re a conduit for information, back and forth, from the employee to the company, and then, when the results are determined, somehow the company, through the ombudsman, gets back [to the employee].

George Wratney's interview is included in Working for Integrity: Finding the Perfect Job in the Rapidly Growing Compliance and Ethics Field.

(All interviewees spoke to us about their own personal experiences and opinions; interviewees were not acting as a spokesperson or otherwise representing their current or former employers.)