Posts Tagged ‘ethics training’
The Grueling Work of Ethics Enforcement
We have a rather pointed teachable moment about corporate ethics from London this week: an employment tribunal there has upheld a decision by Citibank to fire an employee who padded his expense report by a trivial amount — but then lied about it to ethics investigators, which cost him his job. Our tale, first reported…
Read MoreHow to Start a Values Conversation
Corporate leaders always say they want to talk about the importance of their organization’s ethical values, but those conversations aren’t necessarily easy to start. So today let’s look at a resource that Penn State University publishes to help its leaders with the task. The resource is a page on the website of Penn State’s ethics…
Read MoreFighting Ethical Disconnects in Corporate Culture
Well, it’s happened again: managers at a large company did something contradictory to a good corporate culture and common social mores, and made the company look terrible to the public. U.S. Bank, welcome to the hot seat. You may have seen the article in the New York Times that started all this. Nicholas Kristof, a…
Read MoreSurvey, Good and Bad, on Compliance
LRN has published a new survey of ethics and compliance professionals that says employees are still fearful to report ethics violations, and that too many senior executives still aren’t promoting ethical behavior in their organizations. On the flip side, LRN also identified several characteristics of high-performance organizations that echo other industry surveys about training and…
Read MoreHow Good Training Finds Its Wings
I spent most of last week on vacation in California, which required a cross-country flight to get there. Since compliance professionals fly all the time, you know what that means: flight safety videos. And, naturally, thoughts on compliance training. After all, one of the biggest challenges for compliance training is how to keep the material…
Read MoreSales Rep’s Job Is Real Grind
Well, here’s one way to let it all hang out: a former sales rep for opioid maker Insys testified in federal court this week that her boss, an ex-stripper, tried to win favor with a physician by giving him a lap dance. That revealing business practice came to light as four Insys executives stand trial…
Read MoreStarbucks and Policy Management Perils
Compliance officers live for policy and procedure most days. So as we study the regrettable incident of Starbucks and the Philadelphia police rousting two black men for sitting in one of the company’s coffee shops, compliance professionals should consider this point: at large organizations, a little bit of procedure can brew up lots of trouble.…
Read MoreSimple Ethics Lesson of Tom Price
So here’s my first question about Tom Price, now former Department of Health and Human Services secretary, sacked on Friday for flitting around the world on private jets at taxpayer expense. How’d he get back home to Atlanta? Second question. Price racked up more than $1 million in travel costs. When he last week offered…
Read MoreSecretary Mattis’ Insights on Ethics
We begin this week with a round of praise for James Mattis, U.S. secretary of defense. On Friday Mattis circulated a memo to Defense Department staff stressing the importance of ethics, saying he expects all DoD staff “to play the ethical midfield.” The message isn’t long: five staccato paragraphs squeezed onto one typewritten page. I…
Read MoreTwo Compliance Lessons From Baseball Today
A big thank you goes to Major League Baseball today, for giving compliance officers a great example of why their jobs are important—both the big picture stuff about ethics and values, and the nitty-gritty stuff about internal controls. A gift like that doesn’t come along often. The example is the $2 million fine and surrender…
Read More