A person who decides to disclose a wrongdoing may, in certain cases, want to remain anonymous. Other employees or the individual's immediate superiors try to figure out who made the disclosure. The witch hunt begins, but sometimes the wrong person may be accused and suffer reprisals.
This raises the matter of how to protect individuals who are mistakenly identified as whistle-blowers. In a sense, there are two aspects to the problem. First, we must ensure that people who have witnessed wrongdoing make disclosures and that they can trust the system. Second, it is necessary to ensure that within the government, no one is subjected to reprisals, where or not the person is legitimately considered a whistle-blower. No one should ever have to face reprisals.