Patricia Harned

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with a manager from a community credit union. His staff included many enthusiastic and energetic young employees. They enjoyed each other’s company at the office and often socialized outside of work. And sometimes their socializing got a little out of hand. The partying was […]

Among the many, many tales of ethical lapses at Enron, one of the more poignant and painful episodes involved an employee meeting that happened just before the company fell to pieces in late 2001. A worker asked Ken Lay, then president of Enron, about rumors of the company’s failing health. The employee wanted to know […]

The following letter is in regard to the ethical dilemma of doing right vs. being right: Dr. Harned, I recently attended a conference on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and heard the following ethical dilemma. A fellow compliance officer recounted how one of his company’s business-unit presidents, in a former Soviet Bloc nation, wanted to […]

I first heard the story on the radio: Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, had ghostwritten a number of research studies about a best-selling drug that, not coincidentally, Merck had developed. Prestigious doctors had then signed on as authors of the reports for publication in medical journals. An article in The New York Times condemned the situation, […]

He was the sheriff of Wall Street, a rising star whom some believed might eventually occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Beyond Wall Street, he wanted to change the ethics of New York State and perhaps the nation as a whole. But his own ethical decisions paved the way for his political demise and his disgraced exit […]

Aletter came to me from a reader not long ago, and I have to admit that her question gave me pause. (I’ve given the author a psuedonym.) Dear Pat, I read some of your articles in Compliance Week and wanted to seek your perspective on incentives—specifically, the thought of recognizing employees who have set an […]

Rising numbers of mortgage defaults, growing business inventories, declining consumer confidence, falling interest rates, and roller-coaster trading sessions—without question, few economic indicators are heading in the right direction these days. Regardless of the terminology we will ultimately use to define this period in our economic development, it also doesn’t appear that the situation is going […]

Picture the scene: It’s the end of the quarter, and your compliance report is due for inclusion in the board materials. You and your staff have been busy crunching the numbers; so far they’re looking pretty good. The board is going to be pleased, you say to yourself. Fewer helpline calls this quarter. Theft numbers […]

The phone rings; it’s a call to the compliance helpline. You greet your caller, and you are pleased to meet a well-spoken and seemingly responsible employee. She proceeds to tell you her problem. The caller is a fairly senior employee in the company’s procurement division, and part of her responsibility is to assist with the […]