The Only Ethics and Compliance Community You Need
In 2019 we introduced the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) Impact Awards. While the recognition is focused on BELA individuals or organizations, the awards were conceptualized by the exceptional level of support given across the ethics and compliance community.
That support was represented by sharing work product, frequent discussions among those focused on their next program advancement, and hosting other officers for roundtable discussions as they sought breakthroughs not just for their own organization but, selflessly, for anyone else in the community.
As one of the recipients of this year’s BELA Impact Awards, Lamond Kearse, Chief Ethics, Risk & Compliance Officer at Metropolitan Transportation Authority may have captured it best:
The willingness of the BELA community to share not only their successes, but also their failures, has been invaluable as we have traversed together new regulations, demands and expectations for our E&C programs
Chief Ethics, Risk & Compliance Officer at Metropolitan Transportation Authority
In photo: Kevin McCormack, Lamond Kearse, and Erica Salmon Byrne.
What is an Ethics and Compliance Community?
“Community” is a ubiquitous term, used often in both professional and social spaces. It is easily inserted into any description for member-based organizations, broad business categories, and even social media groups. But for a community that concentrates on making companies better and coalescing on integrity and values, it has an elevated position among professionals.
There is a treasure trove of people and information available if you:
- Find a trusted set of peers that can help you, and your team, on the journey. We know compliance leaders are as eager to connect with you as you are with them.
- Seek diversity in experience, background, and industry. The remit for ethics and compliance is only growing and a global perspective across a range of disciplines is essential.
- Make this a true exchange of knowledge. Everyone in ethics and compliance has valuable insights to offer and benchmark against.
Evolving Roles in Ethics and Compliance Teams
The difference-makers in the ethics and compliance community, while traditionally anchored at the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer level, are now also found in more specialized roles.
According to our 2024 World’s Most Ethical Companies® dataset, the vast majority of companies have more than a dozen different backgrounds within the ethics and compliance function.
Data analysts are becoming more prolific to help the company better measure risk, benchmark against specific criteria and peers to identify strengths and opportunities, and work as partners across the business to identify untapped data lakes. Those ethics and compliance team members with communication backgrounds are also considered to be an essential part to connect the goals of ethics and compliance across the enterprise and reinforce a culture steeped in doing things the right way.
Exclusive Ethics and Compliance Roundtables
With such positions of growing influence and source of ideas, they have an increasingly active role to play in the ethics and compliance community.
Hosting nearly fifty roundtables per year in partnership with BELA companies, the commitments that company make to participate and support one another – whether through leading discussions, participating in short polls, or simply asking questions – are indicative of a community that is vibrant and thriving.
They may not solve all of their problems in a week, a month, or even a year, but they trust in a community that has consistently served as that lighthouse to guide them on the journey. Just as best practices, benchmarking, and solutions are essential to progressing ethics and compliance, so is community.
ethical companies ⟶
Trusted Resources and Tools
The years of experience may determine how much guidance you are seeking, but a community can boost that experience for any level, no matter how new to the role or function.
In response to the community, among our top resources published this year is A Guide for the New Ethics & Compliance Leader: Insights into Assessing, Building and Improving Programs, Teams, and Culture. It covers the talk question an ethics and compliance officer should ask around: program and resources, perceptions of ethical culture, written standards, training and communications, monitoring and detection, discipline and incentives, and relationships with key partners.
This guide was curated by combining our data and insights from the ethics and compliance community over the past twenty years. We also aligned key questions with the DOJ’s Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (ECCP). It gives leaders, or anyone on the team for that matter, a baseline. That baseline set of questions and challenges serve as a launch pad for deeper dive conversations with your community to learn how others are addressing similar issues and advancing both in program and in career.
More than just a Community
While ethics and compliance leads are often looking to earn that seat at the table within the company, with the right community that table is continuously set, the menu is substantial, and there is always an open seat.
Joining an ethics and compliance community can be as intimate and resourceful as being able to hop on a virtual call at a difficult moment for peer advice and note comparison. It can be a set agenda with a small group eager to commit to a working group, series of themed conversations, or closed-door roundtable. It can be bold enough to be featured on a podcast in service to the community to share a It can be energized through events like the Global Ethics Summit where the community is at its loudest, where numerous relationships are forged, and the collective action is super-charged.
Ethics and compliance can be a lonely job for some. And even if you don’t feel lonely, you still might feel alone in the work. At the end of the day it’s not to be isolated from the amazing work that is happening outside of your immediate sphere of influence.
Being in the ethics and compliance space already demonstrates your wisdom in knowing that the best companies can succeed through a commitment to higher standards, discipline, purpose, and values. There is also wisdom in recognizing you cannot solve for it all. That is where the right community will shine for you. We’ll be happy to help you find it.