Congress seems to love whistle-blowers.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act makes that clear by requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission to pay at least 10 percent, and as much as 30 percent, of any monetary penalties more than $1 million to those who provide “original information” about a violation of the law.

The financial overhaul measure requires the agencies to set up whistle-blower programs by early next year.

The S.E.C., led by Mary L. Schapiro, released its proposal last week. Unfortunately for businesses, the S.E.C. must comply with the Congressional directive that puts the interest of attracting tips about corporate wrongdoing ahead of the internal compliance programs that most corporations set up under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which passed eight years ago. For businesses, it looks like Congress may be willing to use the new whistle-blower programs to undermine Sarbanes-Oxley.

Admittedly, most corporations grudgingly accepted the compliance programs required by Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including the elaborate reporting mechanisms that can involve reviews by the audit committee and the entire board if there is credible information of significant misconduct. The whistle-blower program does not negate Sarbanes-Oxley — companies will still have to keep compliance programs in place, often at a significant cost. But they may well fall into disuse now that employees have a monetary incentive to go directly to the S.E.C.

The initial challenge for the S.E.C. will be to distinguish information that is worth pursuing from mere speculation and conjecture, or, worse, an effort to harm a company. The rule proposal estimates that the S.E.C. will receive some 30,000 tips or complaints a year, and about half will lead to the filing of the required document, Form WB-DEC, which makes a person eligible to receive a payment if a recovery is made based on the information.

The rule proposal tries to limit the number of spurious tips by imposing what the S.E.C. calls “certain procedural requirements designed to deter false submissions, including a requirement that information be submitted under penalty of perjury, and requiring an anonymous whistle-blower to be represented by counsel who must certify to the commission that he or she has verified the whistle-blower’s information.” How much these modest measures will deter questionable whistle-blower filings is an open question.

Requiring a person to sign Form WB-DEC “under penalty of perjury” may not be much of a deterrent because showing that someone intentionally made an affirmative false statement, a requirement to prove perjury, is difficult. In many instances the information provided will be vague or subject to interpretation, so the threat of a perjury prosecution is probably so low that it will not impede the flow of tips. In addition, the number of people who will use a lawyer to assist in reporting information will probably be fairly small, so this will not provide much of a check on the potential deluge of tips.

Corporations are concerned that the program encourages employees to bypass their compliance programs and go straight to the S.E.C. The agency has acknowledged the potential conflict by encouraging corporate employees to use internal reporting mechanisms while allowing them to qualify for whistle-blower awards. The S.E.C. has also limited who can be a whistle-blower if the information is obtained through a corporate compliance program.

Lawyers, accountants and those responsible for corporate compliance cannot qualify for an award because they do not have the “independent knowledge” required to be a whistle-blower. This is a sensible limitation because working in a compliance program should not be a means to win a reward from the S.E.C. Nor should outside advisers be allowed to benefit at the corporation’s expense by reporting information received in the course of representing it.

Still, the proposed rules would not completely exclude employees involved in corporate compliance from being whistle-blowers. These employees can file a report and qualify for a monetary payout if a company did not disclose information about its wrongdoing in a timely manner or otherwise acted in “bad faith.” The S.E.C. takes a “never say never” approach that preserves the possibility of receiving a tip from any credible source.

For other employees, the S.E.C. rejected adopting a rule requiring them to first utilize any internal reporting mechanism before providing information, reflecting the Congressional suspicion about whether those programs result in adequate self-reporting of violations. If an employee reports information internally, then the company must act within 90 days, while the employee can still go to the S.E.C. This gives a company a narrow window to conduct an investigation and report the results to the S.E.C., particularly if the accusation involved an overseas operation and possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribery of foreign officials.

The Dodd-Frank Act protects employees from retaliation, even if the report does not trigger an investigation or result in an enforcement action. The law prohibits a company from taking any steps to “discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, directly or indirectly, or in any other manner discriminate against, a whistle-blower.” This protection will no doubt make life more complicated for companies because the protections afforded to whistle-blowers may effectively encourage more employees — some who are trying to protect their jobs — to file report as a way to keep their jobs.

The only real incentive in the rules for reporting information internally is that the criteria for determining the amount of any potential award includes “whether, and the extent to which, a whistle-blower reported the potential violation through effective internal whistle-blower, legal or compliance procedures before reporting the violation to the commission.” That is just one of 11 factors the S.E.C. will consider, however, and is the last one listed.

I suspect that an employee’s decision to report information internally is unlikely to have much impact on any award the S.E.C. may give when the whistle-blower is already guaranteed 10 percent of the recovery, particularly if the violation is significant.

The rule proposal also addresses how the S.E.C. will protect the confidentiality of a whistle-blower’s identity and information by providing that commission staff need not inform a company about the receipt of information or that the person may be contacted to further discuss potential violations.

In fairness to the S.E.C., the agency does not have much choice in favoring whistle-blowers over their corporate employers because Congress made its intent quite clear, even if an unintended consequence is to limit the effectiveness of corporate compliance programs.

While there is talk of a pushback against the Dodd-Frank Act on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats have agreed over the last few years that encouraging disclosure of corporate misconduct by rewarding those who do so is a good thing

Rather than limit whistle-blowing, I would not be surprised if Congress expanded the program in the securities and commodities fraud area to other government programs, such as health care and defense contracting.