When ethics training with no ethics training.

This past week, The West Virginia Ethics commission announced a one hour ethics training session open to all employees and is open to the public AND people could get CEU’s for ethics credit.
As I read the article and the topics to be covered in that hour, I found:
1. There was no mention of the word ethics in the modules presented.
2. There was no ethics training module in the course material.
3. They were proud to do a “1 hour training session on ethics.”
4. And the most amazing of all, at least for me, is the timeline of “one hour” of “ethics” training in which all the modules to be covered were all compliance topics and again one not reference to ethics in the description.
I began to wonder as to how many other “ethics commissions” do exactly the same thing by emphasizing compliance under the umbrella of ethics. Here are few suggestions to help avoid this perception of actually doing true ethics training.
1. If you have an ethics commission, make sure that it does ethics training!
2. The process of thinking ethically is uniquely different than from thinking compliance, meaning that they are not the same entity.
3. Every time training like this happens, there is confusion that compliance is the same as ethics and in my mind “cheapen” the effect that true ethics training could provide.
4. Stop giving CEUs for ethics when there is no ethics training. This becomes a joke for many people.
As the New Year begins, now is the time to reflect on your own compliance/ethics training initiatives. What will you do to promote, research, implement, and reinforce differently this year to help your people to not just be complaint, but what will be your commitment to your people in the process of thinking ethically?