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The Truth Can Hurt Even More When It's Too Late
An industry-leading company recently commissioned two outside firms to perform an objective assessment of its corporate ethics program. Each assessment was extensive, involving interviews with anyone who wanted to talk, and people selected by the teams, ranging from middle management to the CEO. Collectively, the two assessments had interviews or focus groups with over 1000 people at every major location. This probably represents the most comprehensive assessment of ethics program effectiveness factors completed in 2003. (One of the assessments was completed by the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP. The assessment team was led by former Senator Warren Rudman, and their findings were published on Nov. 3, 2003. The other assessment was completed by Ethical Leadership Group, and their findings were published on Oct. 23, 2003.)
A number of their findings would allow any company to conclude that its ethics program was excellent, and report, “We've got ethics covered” to its board. The findings included:
- The company had a Vice President for Ethics and Business Conduct, an Ethics and Business Conduct committee, an Ethics Process Council and designated ethics personnel in each of the business units.
- Ninety-eight percent of employees interviewed recalled receiving ethics training during the past year.
- An ethics hot line had been established, and 98% were also aware of its existence.
- Ethics posters were prominently and widely displayed in the workplace.
Fundamental Issues
It turns out that hidden beneath these comforting findings were some very fundamental issues. The company is Boeing, which has had three major programs worth billions of dollars suspended and more recently seen its CEO resign as the result of an unrelated ethics lapse. The core issues in this case are unfair business practices related to competitors and federal government procurement guidelines, and not Sarbanes-Oxley sanctions.
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