It's more like "you don't need to be afraid of whistle-blowers unless you're killing people through your actions". VW didn't make a small mistake -- their evasi

It's more like "you don't need to be afraid of whistle-blowers unless you're killing people through your actions". VW didn't make a small mistake -- their evasion of emission standards has directly resulted in thousands of preventable deaths due to air pollution (they also decided to unethically poison monkeys in order to "prove" that the gasses weren't toxic). Again, whistle-blowers don't just reveal secrets willy-nilly -- there is significant personal risk to being a whistle-blower and very few people make such decisions lightly. The thing is -- everyone has something to hide, which is why that adage is wrong. But not everyone is hiding a scheme they've cooked up to flaunt laws (and lied to regulators for years when they came knocking) which resulted in tangible deaths as a result. If you are worried that you have a scheme like that on your books, then yeah you should avoid hiring whistle-blowers.