Walk into any fitness club this time of year and witness the phenomenon: What started on Jan. 1 as an unwavering commitment to get in shape has become a struggle to keep the momentum, if not an outright surrender. Gyms that were packed with people three weeks ago are starting to look deserted. For many […]
Ethics & Culture
Posted inEthics & Culture
Auditing To Spot Fraud, From Start To End
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted to help fight corporate fraud. Public companies have spent untold millions to comply and hired compliance and ethics officers ostensibly to ensure that the law is adhered to. Yet, somehow, at the end of the day, fraud is still here. However comprehensive your code of ethics may be, and however […]
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A Glimpse Into How Employees Use Hotlines
Nearly three-quarters of callers to corporate whistleblower hotlines haven’t tried to take an issue to management first—and people who report corruption and fraud are actually less likely to seek anonymity than those who report other types of issues. Those findings are just two of many in a first-of-its-kind benchmarking report recently released by The Network, […]
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A New Framework For US-EU Hotline Issues
Letters exchanged between the Securities and Exchange Commission and an important study group in the European Union are offering new hints to companies trying to bridge a trans-Atlantic regulatory spat over whistleblower hotlines. The correspondence—swapped between Ethiopis Tafara at the SEC Office of International Affairs and the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party—addresses the […]
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Ethical Approach To Gift Policies Explored
You hear the shout from Jim next door in the Purchasing Department: “Woo hoo! Look at what our vendors at Acme Corp. just sent me!” He waves the gift over the cubicle wall. “It’s one of those remote-control dinosaurs that’s sold out everywhere. Boy, my son is going to love this!” Not wanting to completely […]
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A Duty To Act When Misbehavior Happens
In the company lunchroom, you overhear a group of employees talking about the new hire in accounting. “I heard he’s been dating Susan in accounts payable for a couple of months,” says one of them. “They met a while back … No wonder he got the job here!” “Yeah,” another employee chirps. “I saw them […]
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Learning The Lessons Of Hewlett-Packard
Movie fans surely will recall Paul Newman’s stellar performance as Frank Galvin, a down-on-his-luck, often inebriated, ambulance-chasing, trial lawyer, in the 1982 film, “The Verdict.” What may not be recalled is that the movie provides an interesting backdrop for current considerations of the Hewlett-Packard Saga. To refresh our collective recollections, Galvin is given a chance […]
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‘Ma, We Were Only Pretexting!’ No More Worries About Filling The Pages
Ten months ago, when I took this job as managing editor of Compliance Week, even amid all the news and announcements coming across my desk, I still had a nagging, semi-ridiculous fear: that we would run out of things to write about. When you think about it, that’s not a completely unwarranted phobia for a […]
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Personal Missteps Should Raise Eyebrows
The cold pavement shocks your feet as you shuffle to the end of the driveway for the morning newspaper. You are almost back to the front door when you see it—a small headline below the fold containing the name of an executive at your company. You rub your eyes, thinking that you’re seeing things; but […]
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Liability Waiver Revived; Big 4 Not So Big
A key committee of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has concluded that liability waivers will not necessarily weaken an auditing firm’s independence, so long as the firm promises to conform to Generally Accepted Auditing Standards. The AICPA’s Professional Ethics Executive Committee recently re-exposed a draft document outlining its views on factors that could […]
