Ethics Lessons in a New Era

It’s been nearly five years since Enron, but organizations still are struggling to create meaningful ethics training for their employees. And with the recent 24-year sentencing of ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, executives are beginning to see how drastic the consequences of unethical behavior can be.

According to Lynn Lieber, CEO and founder of Workplace Answers, a training and consulting company, federal legislation of various types has appeared since Enron, most notably the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, yet organizations still have issues.

“Many employers have tightened up on the financial integrity aspect of their business in reaction to Sarbanes-Oxley,” Lieber said. “They’ve done audits. They do certifications, so their business units are in compliance and things like that. Most companies have a code of conduct but bringing that home to an employee as to what that means to them or their supervisor is one of two areas that we’ve really failed in. The training has to be very personalized to that employee. What does a conflict of interest mean to a salesperson in a specific organization? This training isn’t one size fits all — so much of this is very amorphous gray area. It’s not easy to understand that being a board member on a nonprofit organization could create a conflict of interest with your organization.”

Lieber said corporate employers need to take ethics training seriously, and off-the-shelf products won’t work.

“There are plenty of training products that promise to teach you conflicts of interest in 30 minutes,” Lieber said. “That doesn’t really relate to what an employee does. When you read a record retention policy, you can’t really imagine how that relates to your job. We need to elucidate that for employees and supervisors: ‘Here are some situations in your own workplace.’ Maybe they have happened or maybe management is worried about them happening, but here’s how this situation would present itself in your day-to-day life. Employees and supervisors will be more interested rather than just some off-the-shelf training — ‘Oh, this is a boring area, conflict of interest. Of course I’m not going to do that.’ Do you know how elusive a subject that can be and different ways it can come up in your job?”