Ethics Training: New Needs, New Times

Learning and development are important parts of profitable organizations. Topics such as communication, leadership, team building, change management and diversity are all familiar to the vice president of human resources or the chief learning officer. In this new era, ethics and surrounding compliance laws have become a vital topic for training. The chief ethics and compliance officer (CECO) is an emerging title in the corporate world.

How does the leader of an organization set an example and instill ethics into the fabric of everyday business? How does an organization go from just a profitable company to one that is also values-based? It's no wonder ethics training is becoming mandatory.

With the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) federal sentencing guidelines keeping a watchful eye on publicly traded companies, top-level executives are on notice. No one wants a repeat of Enron, WorldCom or Hewlett-Packard.

Of course, this raises more questions about how publicly traded versus privately held companies operate.

Although ethics training mandates exist for publicly traded companies, most companies do not want to disclose why they implement an ethics training program. Does it mean they have internal issues that need to be resolved? Not necessarily. For most organizations that offer ethics training, however, it typically is folded into a larger training program that covers diversity, leadership or values training.

Interestingly, in 1992, the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association was established with 19 companies, and it has since grown to nearly 700 member organizations. Each of these companies agrees to adhere to the code of conduct of the association.

What is a Code of Ethics or Conduct?
Before SOX, when employees joined an organization, they received and read a handbook that included a code of ethics. After reading the handbook, they simply signed off, stating they had read and understood it.

Was this enough? In hindsight, no. Today, companies share a universal element: They all have a code of ethics or a code of conduct that resides in a policy handbook given to every employee.

It's the implementation, however, that sets these companies apart. Before we address how to put a code of ethics into action, we need to define it. So, what is a code of ethics or conduct? That depends on whom you ask.