Best Practices in Ethics & Compliance
Walking the Tightrope: How to Investigate High-Level Executive
Robert T. Biskup, Director, Forensic & Dispute Services, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP
Properly conducted workplace investigations are a necessary part of modern business. Every employer should know how to con-duct proper, ethical, and effective workplace investigations. But when high level executives are involved, the dynamics of an investigation are much more complicated. Every organiza¬tion should know how to investigate high-level executives without disrupting the workforce or subjecting the organization to potential litigation. Attendees will learn how to use the process of investigation to conduct these complicated and sensitive investigations.
Ethics and the Board: Integrating Integrity into Business Strategy
Andrea Bonime-Blanc, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Corporate Secretary, Daylight Forensic and Advisory LLC; Jacqueline E. Brevard, Vice President, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Merck & Co., Inc.
It is paramount for the governing body of a business to take the full measure of its responsibility and comprehend and appreciate all of the ways in which business integrity and governance intersect with business strategy. This session will examine the additional burden and responsibility that boards have in the face of today’s great economic challenge and ethical crisis.
Participants will explore issues including:
- Who are the senior-level players critical to identifying and resolving ethical issues in your business?
- What are the procedural and substantive ethics and compliance issues that boards need to know?
- When is it imperative for a board to intervene?
- How does your board provide proactive oversight of your ethics and compliance program?
Facilitating Payments under the FCPA: Defining, Deciding, Controlling, and Accounting
Thomas Henzler, Vice President and Corporate Compliance Officer, McDermott International, Inc.
Many ethical considerations, and perhaps even more practical compliance issues, arise when organizations confront the topic of “facilitating payments.” Where to draw the line on the bribery and corruption issues raised is receiving attention from enforcement authorities across multiple jurisdictions throughout the world. These situations become even more risky when the subject is ignored or otherwise not fully addressed. In addition to a discussion of the presenter’s experiences with facilitating payment compliance, this session will explore, through an interactive audience response system, the participants’ own experiences and existing policies. This will provide an opportunity to anonymously benchmark your company’s approach to facilitating payments.
Conflict-of-Interest Risks: Not Paying Attention May Be Hazardous to Your Health
Cheryl Fackler Hug, Vice President Legal and Chief Integrity and Compliance Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Charles Giesting, Corporate Ethics Manager, Rolls-Royce North America
Why should you care about conflicts-of¬ interest? How do you handle conflicts-of ¬interest that involve senior executives at your company? Through the use of real-life scenarios and case studies, this session will discuss the challenges and risks with conflicts of-interest, both potential and actual, and will offer strategies and best practices for managing them.
Benchmarking E&C Programs: Results of the ECOA’s 2008-2009 Member Survey
David Chandler, University of Texas; Jack Radke, Chief Ethics Officer, UnitedHealth Group
“And the survey says …” This session will present key findings from the ECOA’s 2008-2009 Member Survey in which approximately 400 members from more than one-half of the ECOA’s member organizations participated.
Benchmark your program against others (by industry and by number of employees) on such topics as size of budget, staffing, and frequency of meetings with senior manage¬ment and the board as well as various helpline metrics.
The data will be analyzed by both the survey’s academic creator and an experienced ethics officer in an interactive session designed to promote dialogue with the audience.
The Moral Complexities of Ethical Decision-making
Jacob S. Blass, President, Ethical Advocate
Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
People who do unethical or illegal things don’t have horns and tails. 93% of all fraudsters had no previous records; Americans trafficking in shady arms sales pray at our local houses of worship and attend PTA meetings; and 43% of employees admit doing unethical workplace acts. Since we are only human, both enemy and friend, how can we develop ethics and compliance programs that really work?
This session will discuss the moral complexities of ethical decision-making by asking a series of questions.
- Why are employees susceptible to unethical actions?
- How do they rationalize taking the wrong path?
- Why are ethics and compliance policies not enough?
- What can ethics and compliance practitioners do to improve their organizations?
- How can they influence executive management and key leadership?
Results of the Ethics Resource Center’s 2009 National Business Ethics Survey (NBES)
Patricia Harned, President, and Leslie Altizer, Senior Director of Benchmarking Services, Ethics Resource Center
The results are in! Find out what difference the recession has made on employee attitudes about ethics in the workplace. The NBES is a biennial study of the U.S. workforce, and is the leading benchmark for levels of misconduct, perceptions of ethical culture, and the impact of the tone coming from the top in corporate America. Join us for this first public briefing on the research findings.
Codes of Conduct - A New Best Practice Model
Ed Petry, Vice President, Ethical Leadership Group, a Global Compliance Company
Employees, even at companies with award-winning codes, have increasingly said they think their company’s codes are too long and impractical. In some cases, the topics covered don’t align with either the company’s risk profile or what employees see as their most common ethics issues. Dissatisfaction with codes has led to the emergence of a new best-practice model. The new codes are designed to be user-friendly resources that can be integrated with other communications and training initiatives. In this session, we will review a process that, over the last two years, has helped companies assess and benchmark their existing codes, design and develop new codes that are lean and linked, field test the codes with employees, overcome internal obstacles to the new approach, and in the end, implement a code that employees will notice, accept, and actually use.
Innovation in the Ethics Office: Using Immersive Environments to Give Your Communications a Fresh Look
Patricia Records, Senior Ethics/Ombuds Program Advisor, United Space Alliance
Are you clueless about Second Life technology and InWorld Social Networking? Do you need to be convinced that this strange new world can not only benefit your company, but fit seamlessly with your current ethics and compliance communications program? This session will demonstrate how easy and inexpensive it is to use innovative tools to deliver messages in a new and fresh way. InWorld-savvy employees will be excited their company is entering this arena and will eagerly volunteer. Video clips using Second Life can be produced quickly and at low-cost. Employee engagement is high and all genera¬tions will take interest. What’s not to love?
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: The Intersection between Government Investigations and Ethics and Compliance
Jeff Benjamin, Vice President and General Counsel, Litigation, and Ethics & Compliance Officer, and Steve Sokolow, Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Novartis Corporation; Ronald H. Levine, Partner, Post & Schell, P.C.; Karen Green, Part¬ner, WilmerHale; Michael A. Rogoff, Partner, Kaye Scholer LLP
This panel session will feature an interactive discussion on handling government investigations in a manner that builds on and demonstrates an effective ethics and compliance program, while making clear to government investigators that the company has a well-developed culture of ethics and compliance. Building on a hypothetical case arising in the healthcare industry, which could have just as easily been any industry, the panel will lead a discussion of the difficulties facing the company, its counsel, and compliance professionals. This session will explore in-depth how to interact with both in-house and government interested parties in a way that best reflects the company’s commitment to ethical behavior and legal compliance. The panel consists of five experienced attorneys, four of whom are former U.S. prosecutors, and the fifth, a highly experienced ethics and compliance officer.
Integrity Risk via Business Partners: How Ethical Due Diligence Can Help to Reduce It
Simon Webley, Research Director, and Nicole Dando, Head of Projects, Institute of Business Ethics
In recent years, reputational risk has become an increasingly important issue in business ethics and mitigating such risk is oftentimes a key selling point to top management of the value of an ethics and compliance program. One of the most commonly cited examples of this risk is in the branded retail goods sector where ethical malpractice somewhere in the supply chain is used to question the ethics of the purchasing organization.
However, integrity risk, as it is being called, is not confined to supply chain partners. Other potential sources include joint-venture partners, acquisition targets, or even merger candidates. Even the risk of employing an unscrupulous senior manager or contractor cannot be ignored.
This highly interactive session will explore, using both case studies and examples from attendees, how recently developed methods of pursuing ethical due diligence of current and potential business partners (alongside the legal and financial equivalents) can signifi¬cantly minimize a company’s integrity risk.
Tell Me a Story: Using Anecdote and Illustration as an Educational Tool in Ethics and Compliance
Stephen Cohen, President and Founder, EthicsOne; Bob Olson, Director, Member Services and Education, ECOA; Patrick Gnazzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, U.S. Public Sector Business, CA Inc.
Acknowledging the power and glory of stories in our lives, this session will explore the use of anecdote and illustration as an educational tool in ethics and compliance culture-building, training, and communications. It will begin with examples of stories that E&C practitioners have used to great effect in their work (you’ll never forget them!); it will then try to figure out what there is about a story that gives it its tre¬mendous impact on an audience (a toolkit you can use); finally, it will provide strategies for developing and implementing your own mass media stories (boy, that one really hit home!). Examples, toolkit, and strategies.
Getting the Boss to Pay Attention: Becoming a Trusted Strategic Ethics Advisor
James E. Lukaszewski, CEO and President, The Lukaszewski Group
All leaders need trusted strategic advisors, especially when the subjects are ethics, conduct, integrity, and compliance. To advise bosses and leaders, ethics and compliance officers must have a sense of how to approach and be heard. Through powerful stories and examples, participants in this session will learn how to get the boss’ attention and focus on what matters, as well as:
- Understand what bosses expect of advisors
- Gain a management perspective and strategic mindset
- Learn how to give advice powerfully and on the spot
This session is also about clarifying the advisor’s role—when to be a coach, a counselor, a strategist, a partner, or the bearer of necessary truths. Being heard by the boss, especially during crucial or crisis-driven events, and having early influence on strategy and key decisions, can be instrumental in the success of your program.
Emerging Trends in Corporate Social Responsibility – A Paradigm Shift from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Accountability
S. Prakash Sethi, Founder and President, Sethi International Center for Corporate Accountability (SICCA), Inc.
Traditional notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have become outdated and increasingly peripheral to many companies’ core business operations because of growing consumer sophistica¬tion and demand for business transparency. This session will address the “future face of corporate social responsibility,” by presenting innovative views on CSR, as well as emerging approaches to integrating and implementing effective, multinational CSR strategies. In addition, this session will explore the increasing societal expectations around CSR and how those expectations impact the role of the ethics officer, both within the company and in the broader community of stakeholders. Recommendations will be offered for making the role of the ethics officer more effective in the larger paradigm of corporate accountability.
Separating the Need-to-Know from the Noise: Critical Legislative and Judicial Developments Impacting Ethics and Compliance
Courtney McBurney, Partner, Alston & Bird LLP, and Paul Monnin, Partner, DLA Piper
A new administration and an uncertain economic climate have led to calls for increased oversight, heralding legislation and regulations that will not only affect individual industries but also impact the world of ethics and compliance as a whole. At the same time, courts have weighed in on critical issues concerning investigations, issuing rulings with broad repercussions. This session will high-light key legislative and judicial developments, focusing in particular on:
- The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009
- May 2009 amendments to the Civil False Claims Act
- TARP funds and related investigations
- Supreme Court cases to watch in the coming term: whistleblowers, public disclosures, honest services, and more
- Recent judicial pronouncements concerning privilege and cooperation in investigations, and
- The Siemens FCPA Settlement and other key resolutions.
The Ultimate Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Booster Shot for 2010: Cases. Trends. Impact.
Mindy Chapman, President, Mindy Chapman & Associates LLC
Do you need to instantly “immunize” yourself and your organization from liability? Then you need a dose of this highly engaging and fast-paced “bottom line” employment law review. Learn about the shocking new trends in liability that can occur during the lifecycle of the employment relationship from hiring through termination, and the 10 hot spots in between. Discover the new “secret strategy” of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the impact it must have on your everyday decisions regarding enterprise-wide risk. Get vaccinated against the costly lessons other employers have learned, and are now paying for. If you need to take back to your E&C team the critical information and practical controls to avoid EEO-related risks, your prescription is…The 2010 Ultimate EEO Booster Shot!
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