On July 1,2014, in the Risk and Compliance Journal, there was an article on the BNPE Bank scandal. Below is a short excerpt.
“BNP Paribas SA prodded, sidelined and co-opted its compliance staff as the bank broke U.S. sanctions and hid massive Iran, Sudan and Cuba transactions from U.S. authorities, according to the bank’s guilty plea. Again and again compliance staff shifted from warning to assisting in the illegal conduct.”
The compliance staff shifted to assisting in illegal conduct? Are you kidding me? If a company can’t trust its compliance department, who can it trust? I would love to know how the employees of BNP Bank and its customers are dealing with this new information? The credibility of all the compliance and ethics training that has been done has been undone by this behavior.
What is it about greed that would cause a company to jeopardize it reputation, make employees complicit in illegal and unethical behavior and think that they wouldn’t be caught? I just don’t get it.
Is it the challenge of “the game” of business, is it a power thing that leaders would be willing to gamble with their reputation, compliance requirements, employees and customers?
There’s a lesson here. Anyone want to guess what it is?
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!
