Ethics & Culture

Image: When it comes to video games, there are violent games, games that are objectionably violent, and then there are games that actually manage to cross an ethical line in the sand. So when CW Editor Bill Coffin’s son asked for a game for Christmas that hit that third category, you can imagine the discussion that followed. It wasn’t pretty, it’s still not resolved, and it brings to mind the ongoing business costs of making bad ethical decisions, even years after the fact.

For years, Mast Brothers, a brand of high-end, artisanal bean-to-bar chocolate, has proven to be an unlikely success story, making small batches of expensive chocolate bars from its humble operation in the heart of the hipster world—the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. But when Dallas-based food writer Scott Craig took the Masts to task in a four-part expose that accused the brand of being less authentic than it has claimed, what resulted was an intense public debate over the nature of chocolate making, the honesty of Mast Brothers, and what it means to be straightforward and transparent with the public, even when the public might not know enough to ask questions about the products it’s paying for through the nose.

A recent comment about whistleblowers largely being crank cases has raised the ugly notion that those who report wrongdoing are more often venting a personal grudge or prosecuting a baseless case, than actually raising a legitimate issue. But in this age of heightened governance concern, can such a cavalier attitude toward whistleblowers themselves really be tolerated by any company that takes compliance seriously?

Image: According to Kroll’s 2015 Global Fraud Report, close to three-quarters of global companies reported fraud occurences in the past year—81 percent of which were inside jobs. Is employee fear of compliance behind the numbers?  “Compliance can be seen as a burden to employees because it is easy to view it as creating overheads,” says Carlos Desmet, a professor at Belgium’s Louvain School of Management. “[T]hey have to fill out additional forms, go through new controls, follow additional training, ask new authorizations. So they could feel compliance is disempowering them.”

Image: The Compliance Week Europe conference last week was a smashing success—a large turnout, of compliance professionals from across Europe (and beyond), who had vigorous discussions on all manner of topics, capped with great Belgian beer. Still, Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly writes, the most important lesson from our Europe conference applies to compliance officers everywhere. His thoughts on the best insight from last week are inside.

A compliance training program is only as effective as the corporate culture it stands upon—which means employee cynicism and fear of retaliation need to be addressed first if you ever hope your training program will matter. Inside we look at how CCOs can combat cynicism, even when it takes a ceaseless effort by senior leaders to demonstrate genuine concern about culture.

Image: Big compliance changes are afoot in higher education, as more universities hire their first enterprise-wide compliance officer—a trend that took flight in 2013 and keeps on going. “[A]cademic medical centers aside, a central compliance function is a newer concept than in the corporate world,” says Robert Roach, CCO of New York University. Inside, CCOs from some of the nation’s largest universities discuss how they are developing central compliance departments.

LRN, a provider of ethics and compliance knowledge solutions and advisory services, recently added ten new training courses to its online education library. Details on the new training courses, which feature a variety of topics, lengths and instructional styles, are inside.