Ethics

The terms compliance and ethics are so closely related that we sometimes assume the functions not only overlap, but are actually one in the same. The compliance officer in most organizations may also be the ethics officer. While compliance and ethics could be viewed as intersecting circles, there is a clear divide. Instant Download: Read it Now Can’t see the...

Financial institutions have been guilty of a host of transgressions lately, and while the offenses are varied, their causes can be traced back to one key issue: a lack of ethics. Despite the issues being well publicized and having resulted in serious reputational harm, the transgressions continue to pile up. They've failed to grasp that increasing compliance resources isn't the...

With every changing of the calendar, Michael Volkov names a "person of the year." This year, the distinction goes to the Chief Ethics Officer, as companies are coming to a better understanding of the integral role a culture of ethical behavior plays in an effective compliance program. In fact, many are finding that you can't have one without the other....

Compliance & Ethics Risk Assessment: Concepts, Methods and New Directions covers an array of risk assessment ideas, methods, practices, tools and noteworthy items of C&E-related history. A compilation of Kaplan’s popular columns for Corporate Compliance Insights, the book supplements and informs C&E risk assessments of all kinds — whether COSO-based or otherwise.

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...