From Lawyer to AI Whistleblower: Pav Gill’s Path

Why not demand from a governance perspective a solution or a system that will keep you safe um and keep the company safe as well? Welcome to Chatroj the podcast on ethics in artificial intelligence. I'm Roger Steer the corporate philosopher. Today we're joined by Pav Gill, founder and CEO of Confide, a pioneering platform designed to help organizations surface risk, enable safe speaking up,

and transform how internal investigations are done. From his experience exposing the wire card scandal to building governance tech, Pav brings a unique lens on how technology, ethics, and human agency intersect inside modern corporations. Pav, welcome to chat, Raj. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. >> Well, we're delighted to have you. You have an amazing story. Pav, you started

your career as a lawyer, then became known for exposing the wire card fraud. Just tell us about that story first. You are the first person we have had on the show to identify the disappearance of $1.9 billion. >> Yeah, I definitely didn't anticipate life to turn out that way. Um, so I did start my career at, you know, a few magic circle law firms, Ellen Over, Clever Chance. Those were still pretty crazy times though because you know there was the one MDB scandal going on

during that period and both of those firms uh were working on that deal you know in order to structure it was part of the deal team uh that's how I ended up in the in that space um and then I was always very much into fintech and one of the regrets I had was missing out on the so-called.com boom you know having built PCs from young from the 486 to the Pentiums and the and whatever exists but then also having a legal mindset and being a lawyer. So having missed out on I was like fine let's do

fintech next and not miss out on that one. Uh you know having done corporate finance and tech fintech kind of like made sense. So that's how I eventually ended up at Wirecard as the head of legal for Asia Pacific. So Wirecard always you know was boasting about being a fintech itself even though there wasn't much fintechy about it per se. It was more of a financial institution doing payments like a payments company from start to end and yeah so that's how I ended up in that company. >> Fantastic. And what turned you from a

lawyer legal council into a whistleblower and then a tech entrepreneur. I mean it's quite a journey. >> It is. So I was investigating a whistleblowing case in WireArt where someone came to me in confidence ended up with an investigation which the board found out about. uh they then coordinated a hellish experience for 4 months and didn't stop even after I left the company. I mean that was just crazy stuff like that uh you know shouting screaming uh at me having the local director here do that and then when that

didn't work creating like a fake HR case against me when that didn't work trying to send me to Jakarta on a one-way business trip so I don't come back and then when that didn't work uh that's when the company was very happy because finally there's a business reason to force me to resign which is I'm not going on a business trip and that's when I left right so you know it was like okay why can't you enjoy your fraudulent ways. I go find another job, but they didn't stop. So, they were still sending people to follow me and my mom, setting up fake interviews and all that stuff with friendly companies. So, that's how

I was forced into becoming a whistleblower. So, from someone who was actually investigating a whistleblowing case to becoming a whistleblower and that's that was how the FT got involved and subsequently Suda Zaiton and the whole Twitter experience anonymously and the downfall of the company. And just for our listeners, can you just briefly explain the nature of the fraud at Wirecard? >> Well, I think that's still the billion dollar question I would say because it still remains like was there ever a

legitimate business that was making those monies or was there accounting fraud where 1.9 billion is missing? Right. So that's what's happening in the trial now in Munich where the defense is ongoing. >> Yeah. So the defense claims that that was a real kind of business and basically they were just scammed by the COO who ran away with those funds. Whereas the prosecution is saying no this was actually accounting fraud. They were inflated balances. The money just

never existed. Now the problem is it's a catch 22 because if you admit that the money existed then the question is where were the funds coming from and who were they going to? And it's my personal opinion that I think that was the case. And because you don't want to reveal either end of that funnel, that's why probably the less painful outcome is to just say, you know, 1.9 is missing. It was probably taken away by Yan Marle who's been exposed as a Russian spy for the last 20 years and all these things.

But yeah, either way, it's a negative outcome. >> Yeah. Okay. So, what was the insightful moment that told you there's a gap here? We need a platform like confide in order to help people surface concerns and stop bad things happening. There's just a big audit trail problem in companies. I would say you know you have a lot of scattered processes. You have different softwares doing very point solution type things. You have people as a problem as

well because communication lapses occur all the time between departments. So whatever is being surfaced in say HR may not be surfaced to legal or internal audit. So I saw all those gaps and obviously the whistleblowing journey just took that to another extent. Uh and that's when it hit me, you know, why not put all my experience having seen this compliance gaps firsthand and also live with part of that journey from a people's standpoint put it all into a software that would unify everything all

these high stakes compliance workflows into one platform like a single source of proof. So that's what that was how confine platform was born as an idea. >> I think it's an excellent idea. So let's let's get into it a bit more. What does confide do in very simple terms in terms of bringing together all of these disperate sources of information? >> Well, it just unifies things from whistleblowing, grievances, third party risk, AI governance, health and safety, even gifts and entertainment. So, all these different processes, workflows

that have a policy aspect to them. We are basically just digitizing those for a company the way they want it the way the existing processes and policies and mechanisms are into one place. So then that way you have a more three-dimensional view of where things are going wrong what the interlinkages are between these different things. So for example, if you have like um someone blowing the whistle externally saying one of your executives uh tried to threaten me and bribe me straight away

with that system in place, you'll be able to detect, wait a minute, this executive was 2 years ago in a grievance, he also raised a conflicts of interest approval request for this specific vendor. So that way you've got like the whole uh three-dimensional a nonlinear type case management aspect to your business. So, have you had any clients see benefit already? Has it flagged up something which they're, you know, so pleased that uh the system brought it to their attention?

>> Yeah, for sure. I think what's interesting is our clients are global and across all the different sectors and industries. And I think one particular case recently, we were installed specifically because of a series of allegations that were being made against two extremely powerful people in the company for a state of sexual harassment type cases. So they were struggling to get evidence. So the board was kind of in that situation where like okay how do we um a get evidence against these guys

objectively and we need to crowdsource in a safe way potential victims for this but the victims don't trust the the existing hotline and also they need some level of assurance that whatever we roll out would be something trustworthy and keeps them safe. So that's where you know they got me to do like a little town hall as part of the roll out and say this is who I am. This is why I built this platform. So you can rest assured it's not some insidious tool your company's putting in place. It's

Yeah. So I think that's how they rolled it out. And initially there was a lot of testing of the system. So you'll see a lot of like minor reports go through about like the coffee in the pantry being bad and stuff like that. But these were actually testing to see if they will rebound and expose. And I think after a very quick period of 2 3 weeks that suddenly then ended up having all the serious cases come in. So I think you know employees might have been testing speaking to one another and then they realize like okay this thing actually is okay. Let's try now start

reporting properly. Thank you. And um I think it's a wonderful example because it you know 1.9 billion is a lot of money but actually someone's physical safety is even more important. So thank you for sharing that. So there's a huge amount of data here and that's obviously why AI is helpful because of its ability to process huge volumes of data at speed. So how much of confide's functionality is functionality sorry is already powered by AI or is moving in

that way? For example, signal detection, pattern recognition in emails, early warning dashboards. Obviously without giving away trade secrets, give us a flavor of of how the AI and what sources it's using to to pick up these patterns. Well, it's interesting because we already using AI for automated routing, risk scoring, pattern recognition as well so that teams can prioritize these issues and when we think about okay how did confide platform which as a flagship

software started in whistleblowing how did that now add AI governance in there I think it's not too dissimilar in a way because you know for whistleblowing and case management what we created was a unified system for the intake triage, secure coms, evidence handling and oversight. And then we also built in like form logic, routing, permissions to adapt to different policies and countries. Whereas where the AI and workflow automation fit in is on the same foundation. So AI governance actually is kind of the same foundation.

It lets organizations track uh AI related risks, approvals, supplier checks, model inventories, incidents, testing notes, signoffs. I mean the aim is really to make sure that decisions, approvals and controls are captured in a clear and auditable way. So that would be the fundamental thesis that underlines not just the AI governance module but all the different products that we have. So when you automate all of this this data you record it you automate investigations what are the main ethical

risks that you have to be aware of and your clients have to be aware of for example false positives bias privacy etc. I would say the the whole function of the AI is not to draw conclusions about um our individuals for example. I think that's a big risk. So the primary use of the AI would be to support the workflows. So for example, if you think about uh say the whistleblowing aspect or any of the product aspects, the very first stage is the most important

because that's where you are in contact with the person raising that concern or that issue. So you want AI to have that intelligence to get extract as much info at that moment as possible. So whether that's conditional logic driven or is chatbot driven being able to make use of that first stage opportunity that's key. And then where AI will continue to play a part is also at the end. So for example, I mean in the middle sorry in the middle will be the next step saying look this report has come in and it

potentially impacts uh these different regulations you're looking at now right so uh there's a bit of a legal tech element I would say in that or rack tech element and then from a reporting from a conclusion standpoint you want AI to be able to automate the reporting aspect so whether that report the final report the uh goes back to the person or to your board or to a regulator, auditor, lawyer, whoever, you can use AI to create um that. So, it's very important

to also stress that the platform avoids making automated judgments about people. So, it's also important to communicate that frankly to people using them to the end users that the system is actually not like spying on them or profiling them. Yeah. Just basically supporting the workflows. >> Good. As you know, in every corporate scandal, someone somewhere or more than one person in multiple places knew what was going on and did nothing about it. That's that is until it's until it's too late. I was just wondering as you were

describing the process. So AI helps to flag and raise issues, but it goes to human oversight, which is great, but does the system then detect whether or not that human does something about it? So there's a link here between confide and proper oversight governance and investigation internal audit activities isn't there? >> Yeah. I mean from an auditoral perspective yes I would say so every single actions being audit logged for example from the case management

standpoint. Now as you rightly also kind of insinuated the biggest failures don't come from technology but they actually come from people right. So for example at wire card you know the tools failed whatever they could have had it's because the people with influence did not want that scrutiny. So ironically AI can magnify that kind of behavior if it's not kept in check. If leaders want to hide something you know they can mislabel data they can override controls or they can even approve models without proper checks. Right? So good governance to me honestly is not about about having

clever models or all these things in place. It's about actually making sure no one can quietly bend the system. So I think again like even if they're trying to do that because of the audit trail element from an accountability or transparency perspective should something go wrong at least again you can go in to check okay how was this process or this issue managed was someone trying to do something doggy or someone trying to close a case without the relevant approvals or the relevant process being followed. So like you know if you're a board member you want to

come in you want to check to ensure like okay something blew up how was this particular issue handled. I think that's where you have that um benefit. >> So, as you've already said, speaking up culture, creating a speaking up culture is deeply human at a fundamental level. Um, and this is where your work and my work connect, I think, because one of the things that I've been doing is detecting the amount of fear in the workplace. And the reason there's so much fear in the workplace is it's not a

democracy, it's an autocracy. In other words, power is held at the top and everybody else responds from what people call consequence management. I'm sure you very familiar with that because you've experienced those consequences. So, how do you design a system that supports this human dimension without actually stoking fears but actually making people feel safe safer because the system is there to help them? I mean

in order to build trust I would say that the staff need to actually realize that something is working and believe in it that's like the first step and that's a really execution focused approach not a slogan approach which a lot of companies like to do right so I would say like trust comes really from having structure from having discipline so people will actually trust the system when they see like the reports that they're making are handled properly responses are cleanly recorded and decisions I actually explained and this part is always a lack

decisions for some reason whether it's because management or the more senior you get you feel the less need to have to go down to that level to explain your decision making ways. So a lot of ego potentially in that as a problem. So I think yeah if if you have a way which demonstrates that not only from a solution perspective but from a outcome perspective you are tying in everything into a cultural aspect into a communication aspect a human aspect I would say I think that's where you know

basically like don't the most simple example we don't have any sacred cows something came in okay it could have been against like the biggest biller in the company but if there needs to be a consequence then the consequence should be there and it should be visible. Shouldn't be like hidden away or uh you know along those lines. That's where people will be like okay wow these guys actually mean business. Uh no one's no one's got a god mode on if they've done something wrong. Here's a here's an idea and a question. So, one of the things

about culture is certainly in a fear-based culture like we get in many workplaces, it amplifies bad news or it suppresses bad news or it just suppresses news. One of the ways to start shifting that works is using human uh digital or hybrid systems to actually amplify good news. So could you actually increase the trust and credibility in confide by not only checking for bad

behaviors but actually amplifying and celebrating great behaviors in the organization. Is that something that could build credibility and actually build a positive culture do you think? >> Yeah, for sure. I mean there's various ways I've heard companies trying to do something akin to like you know a buck bounty system in the cyber security space. So actually rewarding so throwing in this whole reward element like okay you know we would like to publicly thank so and so if they're not anonymous uh

for having raised this issue this issue was investigated we saved a potential damage amount of x amount for example and we would like to publicly acknowledge this. So that could be one. Some companies kind of are thinking along the lines of financially rewarding as well. So if you want to financially reward then the question is okay but what if the person wants to be anonymous right? So the way they're going about thinking is putting in a a way where someone that that same reporting person

could put in like the um say the the crypto address which is anonymous and then like a little token of thanks like a mini bonus like you know it could be a couple hundred bucks or whatever uh goes in as a token of appreciation to this person's anonymous crypto account right so I guess that's a very forward thinking uh novel way my only concerns with that approach with anything financially incentive is that it also could have a negative aspect to it because then you don't want people to be going around ratting each other out for

just to get a financial incentive because then it's a horrible atmosphere to work in as well. So I think yeah so that's how I've been seeing it kind of play out from a software kind of reward culture perspective. >> Yeah. I mean as you probably know the research is pretty clear that recognition is far more powerful than rewards. certainly small rewards like a 100 or 200 bucks here and there for people to start to see that actually having the courage to speak out or actually doing the right thing all the

time. That's what I'm getting at. So, we're talking about identifying and rectifying things when they go wrong, when people do bad things. But I'm just wondering, and you know, you've answered it, but I'm just wondering going forward, how you can create a part of the system that celebrates people who do the right thing, which doesn't involve whistleblowing. It's actually just doing the right thing. It's helping each other out, you know, winning a great contract, all of that sort of stuff.

>> Yeah. I mean it's um this whole whistleblowing thing has such a overarching blanket kind of net that it casts that it it kind of labels or has a risk a real risk of labeling even raising a legitimate concern as whistleblowing, right? It could be a purely operational >> business thing. It doesn't need to be personal. For example, you know, an employee could be very concerned that besides the fact that her boss is using his wife's company as a vendor, their

breach is already unethical to to to an extent, a large extent. But the concern could not be that. It could be that the the vendor itself kind of sucks, right? Whatever is not qualified is delivering bad outcomes. Customers are going to suffer. Now, if that person were to raise it to the boss directly, obviously, it's not going to turn out well. But if internal audit has a channel that they can understand that hey look someone anonymously is flagging a very objective risk they're not personal they're not attacking the boss

they're actually saying look this specific vendor is not has low QC is going to impact us as a business internal audit wants to know about it so you need to create like safe mechanisms for people to do that and if you don't want to go into say whistleblowing or even grievances or any of these things you could even confide we've had a customer asked us to create a product called disclosures. So disclosures is a very interesting product because and is bespoke for that company. They actually wanted it. So they wanted a product where employees could just raise

something without necessarily wanting to drive that issue to an outcome. So for example, they could say, "Look, I walked past this office, the air con was leaking. Uh someone should just say no." And that's it. They go on their own way. They don't actually drive for an outcome. for example, say uh a bullying or a victim wants to see an outcome. So I think that would be also a very good way. So you're digitizing like a feedback box or some kind of like town hall experience where people don't want to voice the CEO directly, but having

that that channel and then potentially saying publicly to the to all employees, look, you know, you guys raised these concerns, we've dealt with it and thanks everyone for doing that. I don't know. I mean I'm not a culture expert I would say but that's kind of like the ways I would go about thinking about these things. >> Thank you. Let's now move to the boardroom and governance. So in financial services for those who are not aware there's something called three lines of defense in terms of stopping bad things happening and managing risk.

The first line are the customerf facing groups. The second line is compliance. The third line is audit and audit reports to the board. How how do you think your work and confide is helping with the deployment of governance tech given that many boards are still struggling with culture with understanding the human dynamics in their organizations? I mean, we're really seeing it for at the moment with the BBC and this this um uh issue around

the way that the Trump speeches were edited in a way which were perhaps not not helpful. How how is this going to help boards do you think? >> Well, boards are always assigned with oversight primarily, right? So they want to make sure that things are operating within specific frameworks within whatever governance elements whether it's cyber security or it's AI governance financial I think they primarily want to be able to I would say from a practical perspective hold people accountable so if you think about every time something blows up then the board

gets involved and they would be like okay where did things go wrong who dropped the ball potentially or where in this process did things actually take a turn for the worse and they may not be doing that in order to just blame somebody or point the finger but to generally understand from a process perspective okay now that we found the gap or the issue from a processoriented structure we can now fix this to prevent it happening again so I think if you have like a solution like confight which

logs a lot of these things including uh I mean all the way the whole life cycle right from the issue being raised who was involved what was the decision making outcomes that were taken and why. So I think that will give like a really single source of proof. I would say like a one place to go check how something started, who dealt with it, what happened at the end. You're not going to run into finding out from people necessarily or even which which in itself in a large organization is a huge headache, right? Like how do you find

out from who? Like the first question is like okay, who was involved? Who do we ask? And then people will be delegating, sublegating. It becomes this whole thing. People be saying he said, she said issues. So I think you know being able to capture the whole front to end in one place would really help boards go and reference something even in the startup space you know if a startup suddenly explodes you want to as an investor come in or as a board member to see okay did anyone raise any issues if they did how were they dealt with

instead of going into this whole like everyone saying they don't know or they said this and said that so I think that's how the solution will be very powerful from a accountability and oversight and also to a gap analysis or or risk analysis perspective. If like you know reports are coming in on have been coming in over a time frame specifically of this department or this individual you can already zero in and see these are the heat maps. So I guess that's how they'll also help. So financial services which is where you

working it in terms of wire card they have regulators. What's the interest of regulators in confide in terms of specific financial regulation and is there any interest from broader national oversight in terms for example the EU AI act etc etc so where's the connection between governance and regulation and legal oversight of AI systems >> yeah so regulators will just pass the law and then they will expect companies

to comply right So companies in terms of their compliance it will go to like okay the board members we need to make sure we're complying with say the AI the EU AI act board members will say what are the policies we have in place how are we executing them and then it goes down that level to the execution side so most companies would then draft up a policy they'll have that workflows and everything uh so that's where confide plays a part so we will digitize that into the software and we'll enable them to basically use tech to comply with

regulations Now where the uh AI aspect will also come in very handy is we are going to build it in such a way where companies would be able to then create their own workflows through a genai type process. So they'll be able to create their own prompts. They'll be able to say for example look our financial our transaction monitoring tool has detected this as a transaction has been flagged right a level two transaction has been flagged. Now someone investigates it in the confi platform. If it requires a

triggering of say a suspicious transaction report a company can then automate that workflow to that regulator as well to then automate this. So every time there is a financial transaction it needs a STR filing. You have now created an automated workflow to the relevant regulator. And from the regulators perspective, why this would be very useful as well is because if you're talking about regulated entities, you want to go into companies and check if their controls, their trust controls,

their compliance controls are all functioning. Now, today that's being done in a very manual way. They are proving it through Jira, through Excel spreadsheets, through emails, uh, screenshots and all that stuff. So if you are able to have a a system like confi that brings all these things in one place as a regulator you can ask for access to come in a limited access even to come in and see how the compliance controls are functioning what are they what are the policies how many cases which weren't resolved why were they not resolved so you're you're able to hold

these entities accountable in a very resource like manner so that's that's I would say one use case that comes to mind and are regulators interested in in your work. >> Yeah, I would actually say, but not for this reason. Maybe because I haven't spoken it spoken it spoken about it to them. They're more interested in digitizing their own current systems. So if you think about even a whistleblowing channel whether it's you know whatever it could be a central banks one or a lot of countries are still extremely

backward in that you know if you think about certain countries if you go on their tip off whistleblowing page it's still you've got to download a PDF fill it up and then email it and then some poor guy come is coming in at in the regulator site having his inbox cluttering and having to manually open each email be like okay who's this person what is this it's a fake email how do I even respond. So just a simple triaging of that changing that hyperlink to a confined system where whoever is

reporting you can live chat with them. You can send them a message, thank you for your this, you know, thank you for your report. Can you send me more info? Build that trust, have the online meetings with them at some point and then just triage the whole process and to next level. I think that's where they're coming at it from. I will also say that they're also coming at it from a investigation standpoint. So we have been we have the ability to spin up same day portals. So for example, if there's uh I don't know say vaping like in

Singapore there's a vaping pand epidemic going on government's really upset if they say look we want to design a specific website where any vaping related tip offs or or in some information can be sent to can you do that? So yes, we can on the same day we can spin it up. They can drive traffic to it whether with the media or whoever. And in a funny way based on what we were discussing earlier in terms of incentives, they could then incentivize and reward these people that are reporting it. And again, vaping is a very it was relatively minor issue, but

you have you can see how this scales out to large scale investigations. For example, bribery or corruption. You know, you want to crowdsource from from members of the public. You don't know how to. they don't want to expose themselves. Having this as an intermediate layer with a look and feel of that specific uh investigation I think would be very powerful as a use case. Thank you. Before we start looking towards the future and your hopes and dreams for this work, for our listeners,

perhaps you can just summarize what are the red flags organizations ignore which eventually lead to scandals and what role in summary would should tech play in surfacing those red flags? >> I mean it's a very emotional process all a lot of times. I think emotions drive a lot of wrong decisions even in relationships. So, you know, much less in in corporations. Whistleblowing is a good example. It's a very, in my opinion, it's a very emotional

emotionally charged process from both sides because you have someone thinking that they're doing their job raising a concern and the knee-jerk reaction tends to be from a lot of companies not not finding out what this thing is, but actually who is a person and why are they reporting this? Right? So you go you you kneejerk straight into motive and and identity versus if you could just strip that out with say on fire or technology or whatever and just focus on the facts of the report and ask yourself

as a company that only one question okay which is if this is serious uh and and legitimate would it have a material adverse impact on my business if I don't deal with it right cuz I think if you take that mindset and then you start going objectively to get more information then you you're doing a a less emotional emotionally driven process and you will save yourself um that outcome. So I think tech would play that interface in terms of hopefully stripping out emotions focusing on facts

and having an objective fact-driven exercise to a lot of these issues. Yeah. I mean if whistleblowers on the flip side are not angels as well a lot of times you know they could have become blackmail situations where they now try to drive an outcome or they are threatening the company or they're saying look if you don't want to deal with it or pay me out a CC will so it's up to you to decide. So how do you navigate that side of this funnel as well? >> Thank you. So let's start thinking about your wishes and dreams. If you could

embed one principle into every governance or whistleblowing platform, digital or human, what would it be and why? One, >> it would be what we we did, which is the audit trail. I think that's super critical because a lot of times it's also the people that are messing the investigations up for whatever incentives or agenda they might have. For example, if you have like a general counsel who's so influenced by Hollywood thinking that their job is to be the fixer and make problems go away that's showing value to the CEO and scoring

points like in Billions the series if they have that mindset or they they're like a sickopant or something the audit trail acts as a check and balance because then they know how they are dealing with this situation is going to now reflect on them. So as much as they want to protect the bosses, they need to know that if anything explodes their actions are being logged, right? So I think that forces a kind of sensible sensibility into it which you wouldn't if you don't have this then it goes again into he said she said people

saying no I had this face to face this is not what happened that person was lying that department didn't handle it or that person left. So we don't know where they are they don't want to speak to us. So I think that audit trail is really critical not just for board members but also investors also for regulators also for insolveny situations. Insolveny administrators may want to come in and see okay is the company actually telling me the truth as to how this thing exploded. So there's a lot of power in that audit trail. On the

flip side is also potentially what would scare people away because we all know there's companies that insist strategically one not to have audit trails in certain situations >> which is in itself a red flag >> for saying that I >> so my next question you've just triggered it which is are you optimistic that technology will empower more transparency and accountability or are you worried it might create new forms of silence or self censorship.

>> No, I'm I'm optimistic on it. I think technology is giving people more avenues, quicker avenues to raise issues and demand outcomes. You know, AI is totally outcome driven and the outcomes are super quick. So, I think that's also going to put a spin on how people have been doing a complete revamp on how people have been dealing with not just processes and organizational stuff, but also people. So, you know, everything's so quick. Everyone wants quick outcomes, quick answers, quick determinations on

X, Y, and Zed. And I think that's also going to give people more of a voice because if you're now communicating with a chat GPT, you would think communicating your woes or your issues or your questions is going to be a way of life. Now, if your company's not going to give you that ability to do so, then that's just going to force you into using external or non-comp ways to do that. getting business leaders need to get ahead of that curve. Understand that Gen Z's are no longer uh and even younger generations are no longer the old school ones. You can tell to keep

quiet, you know, put your head down, do your work and go home, take your salary, stop asking questions. It's not. If you even say that, they will record you, put you on TikTok, and now you're the one looking like a complete idiot for saying that. So, I'm very optimistic on that front. What I'm hoping, and this is like pure optimism, is that regulators and law enforcement agencies also start to adopt that as quickly as criminals or wrongdoers would because otherwise it's just going to be that endless chase that happens. Dave, before we get towards the

close, one of the things we like to do is a quick fire round where hopefully you can say yes or no or whatever it is. So, uh, you got a choice. The first one is hotline or digital platforms. Which wins and why in your view? digital platforms. I absolutely hate hotlines for whistleblowing because great if you're most of the senior people are not going to pick up a hotline and call some random person they don't know that's not even part of the company and tell them what the issues are. >> Exactly. AI triaging reports. Yes or no?

>> Yes. >> Most underestimated risk in corporate culture today? >> Benefits. >> Can you explain a bit more why you say that? I think companies are uh hesitant to reward people and in a society or in a world where everything's driven by money or by incent by incentives whether it's gamification type incentives or or financial ones you need to and also the endorphins and this you know that that slow that that expectation of quick

outcomes I think if you're not going to play with what's happening in the world today then you're going to have disgruntle or like low morale or just like okay what kind just a boring normal company doesn't understand what makes me tick what motivates me or incentivizes me then I think that's where things will also work against your favor >> one piece of advice you give to a CEO of a large firm about integrity and culture in 2026 apart from benefits >> take it seriously or I mean be proactive

don't delegate it to control functions while as a CEO myself I like to be optimistic. I think we also need to put think the way lawyers think as to what happens if it doesn't happen. So that would make you uh and in a world I think from my and I feel very strongly about this in a world where agreeing to disagree is becoming extinct as an art form I think the more we adopt that kind of thing we we try to see the other side of why what I think wouldn't work from another person's point of view I think

that that would really help mitigate a lot of bad outcomes. And my final question to you is what is the one thing you'd like our listeners to think about or do in terms of the work that you've you've been doing so admirably? I mean when we had this whole ESG phase a lot of effort grassroot effort um bottomupdriven effort was from was from people demanding greener companies demanding oat milk in the pantries that

pretty much happened overnight. So I think why not demand from a governance perspective a solution or a system that will keep you safe um and keep the company safe as well and also operating in a very integrity first manner. So before you do an interview make sure that the company has conf platform in place and if it doesn't ask them why not. Wonderful. I love it. So I'm going to summarize the key takeaways for me in our conversation. AI can turn whistleblowing into an audit trail that

both removes risk and benefits your business. AI is outcomed driven and the outcomes are super quick. This can head off problems before they become existential. For companies that don't have a product like yours, it's still possible for more than a billion dollars to go missing from a company. And the most underestimated business risk going forward in most corporations today is the benefits package. So, Pav, thank you so much for this deeply illuminating conversation. You've been a fantastic

guest and you know, I for one am very excited by the work you're doing because it's desperately needed as an expert myself in corporate culture. We need to fix this ASAP. So, thank you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you as well. Really enjoyed the conversation. >> Wonderful. That was Pavil, founder and CEO of Confide. If you found this episode helpful, please like, subscribe, and leave us a five-star review. It really

helps others find the show. I'm Roger Steer. Join us next time on ChatROJ, where we examine not just what AI can do, but what it should do.