Anonymous Feedback is a Dangerous tool and it Can Tear Trust Apart

Anonymous feedback is a common tool in workplaces. But does it deliver what it promises, or does it breed distrust and confusion?

Photo by Bermix Studio on Unsplash

Many years ago in Hong Kong, I witnessed an interaction that perfectly captured the paradox of "anonymous" feedback in the workplace. A manager walked up to a colleague and casually asked, "Why didn’t you complete the survey yet?"

That colleague looked up, puzzled. "Wait," he said, "how do you know I didn’t fill it out? I thought the survey was anonymous."

The room fell silent for a moment, and you could almost hear the awkward realization sinking in. The manager fumbled for a response, offering something about tracking participation rates but not individual answers.

That single question had unintentionally exposed a flaw in the system: the promise of anonymity wasn’t as airtight as everyone had been led to believe.

And, if anonymity could be questioned so casually, how often were these systems inadvertently undermining trust rather than building it?

The Promise of Anonymity

Organizations often implement anonymous feedback systems with good intentions. They want to empower employees to voice concerns without fear of retribution. In theory, this makes sense. Not every workplace has the psychological safety required for employees to speak freely.

Anonymous surveys, suggestion boxes, and tools like pulse checks aim to level the playing field, ensuring everyone has a voice. It sounds like a perfect solution—except, in many cases, it creates more problems than it solves.

Take the manager-employee interaction I mentioned earlier. A survey promised anonymity, but the manager approached an employee directly about their lack of participation. This kind of misstep isn’t just a breach of trust; it’s a reminder that true anonymity in corporate environments is tricky to achieve.

The Reality of “Anonymous” Feedback

I believe that most of us don’t like receiving anonymous feedback.

Giving and receiving feedback can be daunting, however, it can be worse coming from an unknown source.

My experience is that managers who have a command-and-control mindset do not like transparency, conflict or challenge. They see that as confrontation and try to avoid that.

How people engage with each other, and how managers and team members give or receive feedback often tells a lot about an organization’s culture. Doesn’t it?

I can see that you are nodding your head, most likely in agreement.

Anonymity is often a facade. Even if individual identities aren’t explicitly linked to responses, the nature of data collection can reveal clues about who said what. Patterns of speech, specific examples cited in feedback, or even the timing of survey completion can lead to identification.

Employees are smart. They know this. And that’s why many don’t believe the “anonymous” promise. Now, LLMs solve some of that problem - ask ChatGPT to write something and it will churn out AI words that are hard to associate with real people.

When trust in the system erodes, the feedback it generates becomes shallow and guarded. People won’t take risks or provide meaningful insights if they suspect their words can be traced back to them.

Is anonymous feedback good or bad

The debate about anonymous versus face-to-face feedback isn’t new.

In my work as a coach, consultant and sometimes as a manager, I have come across scenarios where leaders were looking for, and at times, encouraging, anonymous feedback.

Their logic or assumptions often were similar. “People feel confident providing anonymous feedback and we learn what our teams actually think about the organisation or the processes or the management or all of these.”

Nonsense!! If the culture of a place isn’t conducive to openness, people will not tell the truth even in an anonymous survey.

If people in a team find it hard to offer direct honest feedback, then it is clear that the group has trust issues. Because if I trust you enough, then I’d feel confident that you would listen, pay heed and won’t mind about my feedback.

So, in general, it seems that anonymous feedback isn’t a good thing.

What happens when you are allowed to give anonymous feedback?

How people respond to a request for feedback largely depends on how they feel in the setting in which they are.

We respond and react passively or negatively in an environment that makes us feel unsafe. That’s why the ‘feeling of safety’ matters a lot. When employees feel safe to challenge the management, they inadvertently also save their employers from a lot of trouble.

When they don’t feel safe, they won’t bother telling the management that the organisation was on fire, and in some cases, literally.

In a blame culture, while some people give up hope that the management would take any actions on their suggestions; few others find the request for anonymous feedback a great opportunity to vent their frustrations.

They may exaggerate situations, they may skew data by giving the lowest score for everything and they may even lie if they feel vengeful. And why wouldn’t they? Anonymity provides them the veil to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.

Receiving anonymous feedback:

Here is a scenario that you will possibly recognize.

“Hi, we need to talk”:

Your manager comes to you and says,” I have received some feedback about you from some of the team members. They think that your quality of work is poor, you delay their work by not responding on time and you arrive to work late. I’ll have to take some action if you don’t improve.”

Naturally, you are taken aback because you thought you had cordial and honest relationships with your colleagues. You considered them your friends and you always assumed that they would approach you for any concern they had about your work. Anyways, you always believed that you produced high quality work. You have been praised for your work by the clients and this feedback did not seem to make any sense.

So, you ask,”who has given that feedback?”

Manager says, “All feedback that we receive is anonymous. We don’t want people to feel exposed or unsafe for providing information or feedback. And we also don’t want people who receive feedback to be vengeful.”

“That’s a load of bollocks!”, You feel like saying to your boss, but decide to keep this thought in the mind and don’t actually utter it. Times are tough and saying that could be a career limiting move.

Instead, you mutter, “I understand that, but without knowing exactly what the issue is, I can’t accept or even take action on this feedback. Actually, I think all of that feedback is incorrect. If you tell me who’s provided this feedback then I will work with them to fix things.”

Of course you never get that information.

The problem in the above scenario is that you don’t have any specific information. The feedback was vague, you didn’t know who provided that. You also don’t know whether your boss misunderstood what your colleagues said about you or whether they all were truly two-faced people. If you have a weak manager, then the first thing that comes to your mind is whether your boss was making up all that feedback.

Whatever the case maybe, now you have a dislike and distrust of almost all your team members and also your boss. The damage has been done.

Criticism vs critique:

Criticism is always an attack on someone’s person. When you give critical feedback, you’re talking about that person and how bad they are. However, when you critique, you talk about an attribute of a person, and not the person.

Brene Brown says this about anonymous feedback:

“If you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

What does good look like?

The good looks like working in a culture where people feel safe speaking out, respect is a common behaviour, the management folks are open and honest in accepting mistakes and failures and actively ensure that their teams do the same by encouraging them.

I worked with few such teams (I have yet to see an ideal organisation) where people openly expressed their opinions and views. The leaders there created a culture where we felt safe to debate and challenge in an honest, healthy and respectful way.

In an environment like this, team members as well as managers can offer genuine and meaningful feedback in a supportive way. There you talk like mature people. And that not only helps the individuals to grow, but also helps their teams and organisations to stay on course. These cultures also encourage frequent and just in time feedback instead of waiting for a quarter of a year to deliver bad news.

The End of Anonymity?

Does this mean we should scrap anonymous feedback entirely? Not necessarily. But we need to be more thoughtful about when and how we use it. Instead of relying on it as a one-size-fits-all solution, organizations should view it as one tool in a broader feedback strategy.

---

It’s time to rethink how we gather and act on feedback in the workplace. If you’re a leader, ask yourself:

• Are your feedback systems helping or hurting?

• Do your employees feel safe speaking up?

• Are you modeling the kind of openness you want to see?

If you’re an employee, reflect on your role in the feedback process. Are you contributing solutions, or just pointing out problems?

We all have a part to play in creating better workplaces. Let’s move beyond faceless critiques and focus on building real, meaningful connections.

Final Thoughts

Anonymous feedback isn’t inherently bad—but it’s often a symptom of deeper cultural issues. If we want to create workplaces where people thrive, we need to prioritize trust, transparency, and open dialogue.

Real change starts with real conversations.