Tips on Navigating Ethical Dilemmas

ethical dilemmas

Earlier this week I attended the annual conference of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, where some 4,000 people gathered to talk all things fraud and how to prevent it. Several sessions, however, looked at the larger issue of the ethical dilemmas employees often face when encountering examples of fraud. Let’s pull on that thread.…

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The Grueling Work of Ethics Enforcement

ethics

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…

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Lessons on Algorithms, Ethics, and Equity

algorithms

Compliance professionals searching for cutting-edge policy management mishaps, turn your gaze toward Stanford University. The mess that the medical school endured last week with its bungled distribution of covid vaccines to employees offers lessons to us all.  What happened? According to press reports and many unhappy people on Twitter, Stanford Medicine started rolling out its…

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AI, Getting Ahead of Us Again

model risk

Well here’s a creepy example of artificial intelligence racing ahead of our ability to govern it wisely: a tech startup that uses AI to study job applicants’ facial expressions, speaking style, and word choice to generate an “employability score” for people and then filter out low-ranking candidates.  The startup in question is HireVue, and you…

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Great Example of CEO Setting the Tone

Delta

Compliance professionals talk all the time about the importance of “tone at the top,” that accurate but overused phrase that means CEOs should demonstrate the importance of disciplined, principled performance to their workforce.  Tone at the top has always struck me as one of those things where you know it when you see it —…

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Tackling AI and Ethics Issues Intelligently

model risk

You can learn a lot from Google — including, apparently, how corporations might approach the delicate matter of ethics and artificial intelligence. Because Google tried exactly that not long ago, failed in a painfully public way, and raised numerous AI lessons for ethics and compliance professionals to consider before your company tries this at home.…

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When Ethics and Policy Collide

Policies

Policy management buffs, put on your thinking caps. A school lunch program in New Hampshire has given us a doozy of an example to consider about ethical conduct, strategic priorities, and third-party management. You may have seen the story already. A cafeteria worker at Mascoma Valley Regional High School in Canaan, N.H., was fired the…

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Oh F—! Ethics Boss Quits on Swearing Scandal

ethics

Talk about going off the rails: the head of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority’s ethics committee has resigned after a video surfaced of her swearing at police officers who had pulled over her daughter during a traffic stop. Caren Turner, appointed to the board of the Port Authority last year, quit abruptly on April…

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Secretary Mattis’ Insights on Ethics

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…

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Ethics, Politics, and Optics in New Washington

misconduct

The farce that unfolded in the House of Representatives this week over the independent Office of Congressional Ethics is an important reminder for compliance professionals—of just how weak the Republican grasp on power actually is, and how much (or how little) Washington might accomplish in the coming year. What happened, essentially, was this. First, Republicans lawmakers…

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