2007: Ethisphere created the advisory panel to develop the methodology that led to our first annual World’s Most Ethical Companies awards. As all panelists should be aware, we have listed the panelists on Ethisphere’s website since they first joined the advisory panel (some joined after 2007, however all panelists regardless of the year they joined are listed together).

We solicited input from panelists to devise a scoring methodology for companies’ ethics and compliance programs. Panelists’ input included everything from adding/removing criteria, percentage weighting of categories, and processes for verifying information submitted by companies.

2008: We further refined the methodology based on panelists’ input. From those initial years (2007-2008), the advisory panel created a very thorough, effective methodology used to select WME companies.

2009 and 2010: We continued to use the methodology developed in cooperation with the panelists. During this time, methodology discussions between individual panelists and Ethisphere noticeably decreased as the methodology that was created in previous years continued to be a highly effective scoring mechanism. That methodology can be found here.