Ethics

If your ethics and compliance program seems to be dead in the water, don't despair yet. There are several actions you can take first to either launch the program or breathe new life into it. Michael Volkov outlines seven such steps. Follow these recommendations to get the program off the ground and position the organization for success.

Ten years ago, talking about ethics in the context of business was a conversation stopper, much less a global campaign to combat corruption. But the world has been reshaped, as Seidman notes. The two spheres of the personal and professional are no longer clearly distinct and separate in a world that has gone from connected to interconnected to interdependent.

If you facilitate a discussion among several groups of leaders about the values they hold in greatest esteem and would most want their organizations to reflect and exemplify, you may find something interesting: the same values turn up again and again. This has been Jim Nortz's experience, and each of these key virtues, compassion included, is as vital as the...

Compliance alone isn't enough, says Michael Volkov. Compliance alone is the bare minimum; fostering an ethical culture takes your compliance program to the next level, requiring little besides commitment. And there's the payoff, of course... employees want to work for companies that operate with integrity, and clients want to do business with ethical organizations.

We all have blind spots, literally and figuratively. This in itself isn't a problem, but failure to acknowledge these blind spots and intentionally check them when making key moves most definitely is. It may be the reason otherwise brilliant business people and leading corporations find themselves on the wrong side of the law, answering for major ethical lapses.

The NFL has been all over the news lately, and it's not for any of its teams' upsets or losses. Not on the field, anyway. Two scandals involving domestic violence -- and the league's treatment of the perpetrators -- have led to public outrage, with many viewing the punishments, initially little more than a slap on the wrist, as indicative...

Upholding confidentiality may mean different things to different people. But when a client's interests and reputation could be affected by making information public, you and your staff had better be on the same page. Even mere witnesses to a breach of confidentiality can bear some responsibility if a problem arises. So what are your options?

Ethics is good for business. Research confirms this, and yet ethical lapses, issues, and at times, corporate behavior causes major concerns. Most people will tell you that “business ethics” is a contradiction in terms. “Impossible!” they say. “You have to do everything you can to give customers what they want and increase shareholder value. No one can put ethics before...

When issues arise with your ethics program, you have two options for how to solve them: the quick way and the right way. Be sure that you're not taking a Band-Aid approach to a serious problem. Just as you'd seek out a medical professional to stitch you up after an accident, you ought to enlist a properly trained professional to...

Consider GM's latest debacle: the C-Suite claimed no knowledge of the company's use of faulty ignition switches going back more than a decade. And perhaps they didn't know, but they should have. Executives must be held accountable for subordinates' failings, so they must be aware of what's going on internally.

Business ethics is traditionally taught by college philosophy departments. Considering source material often predates modern business practices by hundreds -- if not thousands -- of years, this should raise eyebrows. The principles of classical moral philosophy aren't very helpful in today's business world, so why are they being applied?

A strong ethical culture, including clear expectations for acceptable conduct within the organization and with third parties, is essential for good governance. Ethical behavior, however, involves much more than a code of ethics. The audit committee plays a critical role in ensuring that an organization’s culture aligns with its code of conduct, that behaviors are consistent from top to bottom,...