Opinion

It often happens that a person’s career is over when he or she blows the whistle. Charles Middleton posits that if increasing compliance and minimizing fraud is the goal (and it is), then blackballing whistleblowers is counterproductive. Secrecy is essential...

Reputation risk expert Michael Toebe explores two recent high-profile cases of ethical oversights that have produced very real consequences in terms of social backlash, eroded public trust and harm to the companies’ internal reputations. Ethics are not intended to be...

Ingrained cultures of denials and threats – together with shifts in federal prosecution of organizations rather than individuals – continue to protect a highly entrenched culture of impunity at the top. Join Sandra Erez on a journey all along...

This week Tom Fox and I dedicated our usual Compliance Into the Weeds podcast to the ethics and compliance implications of the mass shootings that happened in El Paso and Dayton last weekend. Nobody relishes analyzing something so painful for so...

Illusion or reality? Stakeholders and executives can only tell if they follow the yellow brick road of due diligence and encourage rainbow diversity throughout their organization, including the board. Join Sandy Erez in pulling back the curtain on the Theranos debacle –...

Sandra Erez presents a cautionary tale for compliance practitioners and boards of directors portraying how disarmingly charming “corporate story speak” can win over audiences (internal and external) – sometimes with devastating consequences. If the corporate story doesn’t fly, take it down....

Sandra Erez launches a series on the college admissions scandal with timely musings on the long-running bribery scheme that has led to the indictment of more than 50 prominent business leaders and Hollywood actors.

Sandra Erez waxes eloquent about milestones in the ongoing fight against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, covering cultural shifts, legislation and landmark Supreme Court cases. While we’ve made serious progress, there’s still work to be done, and training will play...

The failed Fyre Festival of 2017 serves as a cautionary tale to any who’d ignore warnings from trusted advisers and key stakeholders. Sandra Erez discusses how the Fyre Festival went so disastrously wrong – and the lesson compliance practitioners should...

VinciWorks’ Sandra Erez envisions corporate whistleblowing hotlines as an outgrowth of the infamous "red phone" from the era of the Cuban missile crisis and discusses how whistleblowing methods have evolved over the years. Read Part 1 here. It is October...

This is the first installment in a series on whistleblowing solutions from VinciWorks’ Sandra Erez. In Part 1, Sandra provides a brief history of whistleblowing and discusses the importance of a whistleblowing portal. It was a cold winter’s day in...

How Sexual Harassment is Changing American Compliance Corporate compliance has been around for decades – sexual harassment for much, much longer. Why the sudden paradigm shift from just awareness and acceptance to mandated compliance? The #MeToo movement sprung up as...