Is your organization immune from fraud? The 2019 Annual Fraud Conference recently held at the University of Texas at Dallas gave practical steps to assure you are. The conference was an outstanding success and I was honored to have been part of it once again. The conference attendees; internal auditors, CPA’s, faculty and students, learned… [Read More]
The EU Whistleblower Legislation- a Game Changer
Last year I was inspired by the report on the European Commission (EC) proposing a new law to strengthen whistleblower protection across the EU. The press release in 2018 said that the proposal would guarantee a high level of protection for whistleblowers who report breaches of EU law by setting new, EU-wide standards. It would… [Read More]
Brigham Young University: Practicing What They Preach
It is always a privilege to be invited to speak at a University to accounting and business students and their faculty. This last week I had that honor- of presenting to Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management and Wheatley Institution, to these groups on ethics and how important integrity is in the business world…. [Read More]
TRUST Matters! How to Build a Tier One Organization…
The Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI), the oldest ethics research and best practice community in the US has conducted longitudinal, cross-sectional studies of workplace conduct from the employee’s perspective since 1994. It, recently released its latest Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES) Building Companies Where Values and Ethical Conduct Matter, the third of a four-part series… [Read More]
Strategy and Culture: Divided they fall.
A well thought out strategy and a vibrant, responsible culture are the two top tools at leaderships’ disposal in their never-ending quest to maintain organizational viability and effectiveness… Culture expresses goals through values and beliefs and guides activities through assumptions and group norms. A corporate culture matters. It is a key differentiator between the companies… [Read More]
Ethical Behavior Pays Off
The 2012 Great Place to Work® Institute report claims the stock price growth of the 100 firms with the most ethical cultures outperformed stock market and peer measures by almost 300 percent. Thus, researchers have shown that a firm’s culture is the strongest predictor of how much market value that firm will create for shareholders’… [Read More]
Ethical Leadership- Culture is the Culprit!
People act in their own best interests; not necessarily because they believe they are doing the right thing or because they may be punished or rewarded for doing so. And if a company wants to promote and assure ethical standards are followed then transparency, trust and developing an ethical culture based on guiding principles is… [Read More]
Penn Mutual’s Guiding Principles: a First Step Toward Fraud Prevention
Some companies are getting it right. Recently, I was hired by Penn Mutual, one of the oldest values-driven companies in America. At this event, under the direction of Chairman, President & CEO Eileen McDonnell, Penn Mutual’s leadership team introduced the firm’s guiding principles with a straightforward message: Penn Mutual is committed to maintaining a culture which… [Read More]
Department of Justice – Encouraging Whistle Blowing or Blowing Smoke?
In a recent presentation at NYU’s law school, the former Attorney General Eric Holder, said the Department of Justice needs help from whistleblowers if they are to bring financial malfeasance to justice. As Holder stated, ” their evidence is crucial to the work of investigators.” Yet some of us question the motives and believe it’s… [Read More]
