Compliance or Ethics: Which gets most of your training dollars?

One of the topics that has drawn much response from one of my postings on social media was the confusion about the term; compliance/ethics officer. Compliance is not ethics and ethics is not compliance. They are related but not the same. For example, if you look at practically any compliance/ethics position, it describes legal issues and the position description is usually for someone who is a JD. A compliance officer is, most of the time, an attorney for very practical reasons and rightly so. These are brilliant people in their field. However, your ethics officer is what occupation? Attorney, Philosopher? Theologian? Human Resource Professional? or? And more importantly what is their formal training in ethics?

Compliance and ethics are like intersecting circles. There is a point where they overlap and both need careful and equal consideration. The question is, when they don’t overlap and there is an ethics issue, to whom do your people go for an ethical resolution?

It is time to separate the titles and concepts of a compliance/ethics officer or compliance/ethics training (which is it?). Here’s another example of what I’m saying. A few weeks ago the county that I live in ,asked me to consider applying for the role of Ethics Advisor for the County Board. I asked them for a job description and qualifications needed for this position. The job description was all compliance based and the qualifications were either a number of years in county government, a JD, County board experience, and last on the list, a professor of ethics from a university. I emailed my contact and said that you don’t want an Ethics advisor, you want a compliance officer, to which I explained the difference in concept and reality and the reply was maybe I was right!

A client of mine, who is a compliance/ethics officer(and is a JD) in the pharmaceutical industry shared with me his “take” on the difference.

“Simply stated, ethics is the internal intangible that drives us. It’s the value system, or lack thereof, that guides us when we make decisions in our day to day actions. Compliance is much more clear cut. Compliance is about following the rules, the policies, the regulations that are articulated in laws and internally drafted documents. There are consequences for violating those policies and regulations that can result in discipline up to and including termination.  Often, there’s no analysis related to intent. If you violate the rules, there will be consequences. Ethics is more about your personal values. I heard an expert say , either you have ethics or you don’t . Maybe the rules and regs are for those that don’t have guiding principles they live by.

Employees that will do anything to get where they need to go , need a structure in place to stop them from crossing the line. Companies that incorporate a culture of ethical behavior, get employees to follow the rules, not just because they have to, but because it’s the right thing to do. “

The challenge for companies here is to help their people understand that one can be compliant and yet be unethical. The law is black and white and there are consequences. What do you do when something unethical happens, but compliant? What your process modus operandi? What are the consequences?

If companies put as much time, effort and money into ethics training as they do for compliance training, develop proactive, ongoing training in both areas, maybe, just maybe, the way business is conducted, the way people are trained and treated, will take a major step in the ethical direction, which may help people choose to do right, rather than just make them do right.

fbucaro

Like you, business ethics and ethical leadership expert, Frank Bucaro has seen the challenges and problems of corporate leadership, particularly over the past few years in regards to poor decision-making, SEC violations, and record breaking financial settlements in a number of different industries. With over two decades of executive training, speaking, writing and with real life experiences, his view and approach to ethics in the workplace is uniquely different. He emphasizes that ethics is a moment-to-moment choice and has little to do with position, titles, personalities or education. Ethics is everybody’s responsibility from the top down. His goal is to help organizations to: a. Strengthen their ethics training initiatives in order to significantly decrease the odds of an ethical/compliance violation. b. Energize, train and motivate employees to understand the value of consistent “high road” behavior as a business advantage. c. Support individuals and thereby the organization by contributing to its success by quality, ongoing values based leadership development. Frank is known for his very practical, slightly irreverent, yet somewhat humorous approach to ethics and leadership development. His conversational style and real life stories connect with his audience in a personal, intense and practical level. Companies such as Bayer Healthcare, BP, ReMax International, EnMax Energy, Danone, etc. have partnered with Frank when they want to proactively stress the message, tools, insights and practical applications that good ethics IS good for business!