Ex-FBI informant says three things can save companies from themselves

Tom Hardin paid the price for crossing legal and ethical lines as a financial analyst accused of insider trading in one of the most notorious Wall Street scandals. Now he’s on a mission to save businesses from themselves. A keynote speaker at Compliance Week National, he built a second career out of the wreckage of his first, as the poster child of a company’s worst-case scenario: an informant in its midst. 

Unwittingly harboring an informant is bad for business. It means the company, including the chief compliance officer, failed its employees. Hardin made mistakes, but he was also a product of his environment, and that’s the point he’s making to compliance officers.  

Hardin’s story is akin to the frog-in-the-boiling pot experiment. Dropped into boiling water, the frog jumps out, alert to the danger. But dropped in cold water that is gradually heated, the frog fails to realize the danger until it’s too late. Employees operating in a culture of ethical ambiguity are tacitly encouraged to push the envelope on ethical decision-making. Gradually, they lose sight of the real-life implications and consequences of their decisions.