This is the basic nature of a modern American corporation where the culture of the leadership implicitly believes there is a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to generate a profit.
There is a self-selecting process where people promote other people who make those small decisions in a particular way.
If you climb well or are unlucky enough to look under the wrong rocks you get to an inflection point where your option is to become a whistle blower, leave, ask for a promotion, or become the patsy.
Often you can avoid this (if that's your desire) by frequently and vocally asking about the audit requirements of a particular business process...
It goes beyond profit motive. Independent of any business concerns, there's a lot of cultural value placed on optimism, and on appearing competent and confident. Which means that there can be great personal shame in saying things like, "I don't know," or, "This might not work out." There's constant pressure to smile, look on the bright side, and, at all costs, avoid doing something that might earn you a reputation as a debbie downer.
I think that's actually a much bigger factor in some of these situations than any profit motive. Profit motive doesn't push rational people to keep doubling down no matter what; there is room for risk management concerns. But a corporation is not a single mind, it's a bunch of individuals acting in their own interest. Individuals' concern for their social capital within their teams tends to be a much more immediate and pressing motive than relatively remote and abstract things like shareholder profit.
It runs deeper than that. Basic human nature throughout history has been to demonstrate loyalty to those giving you your livelihood. Up to and including fighting wars and providing resources to war fighters, and supporting them when they committed what we today would consider war crimes. Progress as a species can be looked at as a progression from more violent ways to organize to less violent ways, and corporations are less violent than what they came from, royal charters.
Whistleblowing is and will always be considered an act of treason, or direct disloyalty, against those who are expecting you to support the enterprise.
Thats our business culture. You don't really get rewarded for doing the RIGHT THING. Hell your stock options will go down if you do the whistle blower thing.
You don't get punished for NOT doing the right thing. Precious few CEOs and CFOs in jail.
Ultimately it comes down to your own conscience and being able to sleep at night.
There is a self-selecting process where people promote other people who make those small decisions in a particular way.
If you climb well or are unlucky enough to look under the wrong rocks you get to an inflection point where your option is to become a whistle blower, leave, ask for a promotion, or become the patsy.
Often you can avoid this (if that's your desire) by frequently and vocally asking about the audit requirements of a particular business process...