As a company’s most valuable intangible asset, we have witnessed the wreckage of companies that have fallen victim to reputational damage, scandal and ultimately the wasteland of a rotten corporate culture.  In these situations, employee misconduct rates increase, wrongdoing and scandal surround the company, and corporate leaders ultimately fall from failing to sail the corporate ship in the right directions. There are tell-tale signs of...

We constantly hear about the importance of “accountability,” meaning that organizations and individuals have to be held accountable for misconduct or failures to act.  The focus on accountability is a positive trend, consistent with our ideas of justice and fairness,  Within an organization, accountability is a cornerstone of organizational justice. When demands for accountability reach the board room and individual board members, however, there are...

The Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has promised aggressive white collar enforcement. On the flip side, the DOJ has recognized the importance of effective ethics and compliance programs.  In an interesting speech, the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, Kenneth Polite, delivered an important speech on ethics and compliance programs. AAG Polite’s speech reiterated the importance of the Justice Department’s 2020 Evaluation of Corporate...

When you look at the core of several major financial scandals, it is easy to point to problems with sales incentives and corporate culture. A company can rapidly grow due to the extraordinary performance of a company’s sales culture. In many cases, this sales culture creates real and significant risks for misconduct. To address such potential for misconduct, companies rely on internal controls to constrain...

Chief compliance officers face a mountain of tasks – it is easy to get overwhelmed.  Add to the mix the fact that CCOs are under extraordinary pressure to “prevent and detect” potential violations of the company’s code and any law or regulation.  When you think about it, that is quite a heavy responsibility. In the ebb and flow of ethics and compliance ideas, one constant...

Everyone likes to give advice on the importance of tone-at-the-top. Like many things in life, it is easy to talk about but much more difficult to implement. There are lots of ways to describe or analyze the same issue. In the end the result has to be reached. To boil it down, tone-at-the-top requires leadership. That is pretty obvious. But, what kind of leadership? This...