Is ethics being short-changed by compliance?

In the beginning of this field there was ethics. But with the advent of the Sentencing Guidelines in 1991 compliance entered the picture and where there were once ethics programs now stand “compliance and ethics” ones.

Has ethics been short-changed in this transition?

In a recent posting in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation  Veronica Root Martinez of Notre Dame Law School  – based on a forthcoming paper in the University of Chicago Law Review  – writes: “firms should implement specific and explicit ethical infrastructures within their compliance programs, which fall somewhere between the floor set by professional ethics and standards and the hazy ceiling found within moral philosophy as applied to business ethics. By which I mean, firms should attempt to create tangible policies, procedures, and programs that promote ethical behavior within their ranks. In doing so, I suggest firms look to the fields of behavioral ethics, social psychology, and organizational behavior to provide guiding principles when they attempt to craft tangible ethics policies. For my own contribution, I suggest that firms look to commit to adopting policies and procedures that (i) protect the dignity of, (ii) promote the flourishing of, and (iii) advance the interests of the various stakeholders of firms as a baseline to be used for establishing the ethics components of their ethics and compliance programs. Thus, ethics and compliance programs should ensure employees feel valued and are viewed as vested partners within the organizational enterprise and consider the ways the program might impact individuals both within and outside of the firm. Firms might choose to emphasize other attributes as part of their ethics programs, but the thrust of the Essay is that firms should more actively engage in thinking about the implementation of programs that go beyond rote compliance and focus equally on efforts targeted at creating strong ethics programs. That is not to suggest that creating ethical infrastructure will be easy, but the persistent scandals plaguing sophisticated organizations all across the globe suggest that it is time to at least experiment with creating More Meaningful Ethics within ethics and compliance programs at firms.”

I greatly agree with both her analysis and recommendations and think that this is an important article that all within the compliance and ethic field should read. However – and perhaps it is a matter of semantics more than substance – I am a bit concerned that compliance is being given somewhat of a bad rap.  That is, she argues that various prominent business scandals demonstrate that too much compliance and too little ethics can create risks of wrongdoing. That might be so, but these cases might also be examples of bad compliance programs. In that connection the importance of tone at the top is a fundamental ethics precept. But it is a pillar of compliance expectations as well.

She also suggests that firms rely should more on behavioral ethics for risk mitigation. I agree with that, too, but do think that behavioral ethics can support compliance approaches as well, as described in some of the posts collected here.

However, these are small points and there is much more that can be said in support of the author’s basic thesis that “firms should attempt to create tangible policies, procedures, and programs that promote ethical behavior within their ranks.”

In this vein, here are some other thoughts on connections between compliance and ethics in an article from  a few years back in Compliance and Ethics Professional:  Body and Soul: Points of Convergence between Ethics and Compliance (page 2 of PDF).

“First, companies should assess ethics, as well as compliance, risks.” This is extremely rare, and has the potential to be extremely valuable.

“Second, ethics should be prominently featured in training and communications. This means, among other things: providing true ethics training on methods for ethical decision making, using values-based communications, giving real-life (and ideally company-specific) examples that go beyond what the law requires/prohibits, and in otherwise deploying training and other communications to show that ethical action is attainable and desirable in business.”

“Third, following the old adage that what’s measured is what counts, companies should measure ethics-related, as well as compliance-related, conduct. Such conduct should be included in personnel evaluations, employee surveys, and program assessments (self or external).”