Rain may have dampened Lisbon’s streets but not the spirits of some-300 compliance professionals exchanging ideas at the SCCE’s annual European conference. CCI columnist Mary Shirley unpacks the evolution she’s witnessed over five years of attendance, where measuring integrity culture has become a top priority and compliance professionals find themselves welcome partners at the AI governance table — a shift that perhaps reflects the growing recognition of the profession’s strategic value.
Around 300 compliance professionals attended the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics’ (SCCE) European Ethics and Compliance Institute (ECEI) in Lisbon, Portugal. Though the favorable weather Lisbon is known for did not come to the party, compliance practitioners made the most of the educational and networking opportunities to bring back new ideas and connections to their programs.
One of my favorite things about this conference is that the whole thing feels like an assembly of the United Nations. You’ll be sitting at the dinner table with five other people and looking around, note that each of you represents a different nationality, country of residence and oftentimes additional heritage on top. The diversity of perspectives is considerable and provides a welcome opportunity to understand what others are dealing with, their own unique approaches for managing similar challenges and how each of us is contributing to the same goal of fostering a culture of integrity within their organizations.
That brings me to the first topical theme …
Culture was huge at this event
I’ve attended this conference for the past five years and the continued appearance of culture and how to measure it, what KPIs are meaningful, what ideas are moving the dial etc, this year, was striking. If you’re not thinking about culture at the moment, an initiative to ease in and set a baseline is to conduct a culture of integrity survey, which you can draw up as a standalone survey or collaborate with other departments to incorporate into pre-existing employee engagement or other surveys. If there is survey fatigue in your organization, a strategically created activity to solicit culture of integrity information and how colleagues are feeling about it for your corporate ethics and compliance week is a gentle way to issue a survey without having to beg for engagement.
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Read moreDetailsFollowing the past couple of years, AI governance was prominent on the agenda and commanded large audiences
It is clear that folks understand that they are responsible for helping mitigate the risk of AI — but not necessarily as the lead, as the majority of organizations tend to have IT leading the project to build an AI governance framework, with compliance and other functions supporting the effort. AI, it seems, is not an area where we need to fight for a seat at the table; we’re being welcomed to it from the start, and I think this is a positive sign for how far the ethics and compliance profession has come in terms of asserting our value proposition and raising awareness to the business about including us early and often.
Unlike recent few years, ESG sessions were less of a focus
Although there was one main session specially highlighting ESG, there were far fewer sessions on the topic than I recalled from previous years, perhaps a sign that we feel more comfortable with this practice area and that there are new priorities that feel more pressing to compliance officers. Additionally, some organizations have created dedicated sustainability and human rights teams that free up compliance practitioners to focus on other topics.
Another successful ECEI in the books for the SCCE.
As I recover from jetlag, I leave you with this tip to level-up your conference attendance experience from “Living Your Best Compliance Life: 65 Hacks and Cheat Codes to Level Up Your Compliance Program”: Think like a journalist in sessions and take notes. Listen as if you plan to write an article based on the substance of the session. It will help you take more focused notes as you’re less passive in your participation. Then consider actually moving forward with submitting an article for publication to send the elevator back down by sharing your knowledge with others who were not able to be present.
