The liability of a third party investigation is that a person in the area who has been diligently making reports on outnesses observed or reported to him becomes the most obvious target for declaration as the third party.
An example of this would be the branch manager of a car sales company paying the salesmen only a portion of their commissions and pocketing the balance. The salesmen consider they are underpaid. A conflict arises between them and the branch manager. Sales statistics fall. The chief sales representative realizing the dangerousness of the situation to the survival of the business and his own pay packet gathers information which indicates the branch manager is embezzling and sends reports to the accountant at head office for checking. The general manager having heard of the third party law and noticing the conflict between branch manager and salesmen commences an investigation, finds the chief sales rep. has been sending reports to head office concerning the branch manager and had previously made reports to the branch manager concerning some of the salesmen misusing company vehicles. The branch manager denies the reports against him and the salesmen state the reports against them to be false. Good indicators on both sides as their denials are accepted and the chief sales rep. gets fired. Oddly enough the pay doesn’t go up, sales stats crash further and the company goes up in smoke.
The matter would have been resolved by full ethics investigation and replacement of the branch manager instead of the one person, trying to protect his job and the company by proper ethics reports, being fired.
When personnel making written reports to proper terminals on out Ethics situations get accused of being third parties it becomes unsafe to report. Ethics without reports becomes ineffective and suppressives have a ball.
It is possible for a third party to use the standard report lines but this is not usual and, as the reports are in writing and signed they are easily investigated for validity.
A third party can make all sorts of wild false reports verbally to various staff members. The on-policy staff member hearing these then makes a written report to Ethics stating what was said and who said it.
When the written report is found to contain false information don’t immediately accuse the person who wrote the report of being a third party-check up on who was maliciously spreading the rumour in the first place.
One staff member aware of a very out ethics situation in an Org that had been affluent and was now crashing into ruin made very proper reports to a higher authority. The reports were neglected. A later third party investigation said the reporting staff member was the third party even though his reports gave all available information, sources of data, who else knew about it and could give data, etc. All reports were in writing and signed. Whenever a report was based on rumour and not proven he stated so. When “revealed as the third party” he assigned himself enemy, cognited that he had exceeded his duties and promised to keep to the standard duties of his post.
In fact he was the only person taking responsibility for the Org and trying to handle the out Ethics situation which was collapsing stats. He should have been commended. Instead his reach was cut and it became unsafe for staff members to make reports.
When a third party investigation cannot conclusively find a third party but an out Ethics situation is revealed the matter must be handed over to proper Ethics authority adequate to handle the situation.
There may be a third party but it could require an Ethics clean up of the area first. The source of the out Ethics situation in such a case will probably also be the third party.