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By early September, a lot of World’s Most Ethical Companies® applications stall for the same reason, and it has nothing to do with data or documentation. The team that energetically pulled together in late July has spent six weeks chasing down policies, scheduling meetings with sister functions, and rereading survey questions that are looking for serious detail. The excitement that made this feel like a good idea in midsummer now competes with everything else that has landed on everyone’s desk since.
None of that means that your application is going badly. The portal opened July 29 and closes October 29 at 8 p.m. EDT, and September sits almost exactly at the midpoint of that window, which is when any cross-functional project starts to feel heavier than it did on day one. What separates the teams that finish strong from the ones that limp to the deadline, or miss it, is wisely spending the energy or bandwidth they have.
Triage What’s Left
Start with an honest inventory of the nine sections of the Ethics Quotient® survey instead of one long list of 288 open questions. Some sections are close to finished because the evidence already exists. Others haven’t made as much progress because nobody has tracked down the right document yet. Work that first group to completion before touching the second. A finished section banks visible progress, and a team that can see progress finds it easier to tackle the section that’s still hard.
The same logic applies to documentation. Ethisphere asks for supporting material across 17 categories, and none of it needs to be created for the application. It already exists somewhere, because the program already does what the survey says it does. Assign one owner to each open documentation request now, not in October, and ask that owner what they could hand over today rather than what they could build with three more weeks.
A Gap Is Information, Not a Reason to Stall
Somewhere in the next seven weeks, someone on the team is going to hit a question the organization can’t answer well. The board hasn’t formally discussed AI governance. The root cause taxonomy in the incident tracker doesn’t match what the survey is asking for. Nobody owns a documented FTO and cartel risk screening process yet.
That’s not a reason to leave the field blank or dress up a thin answer. Answer honestly, then do something with what the gap just told you. Raise the AI governance question with the board chair this quarter instead of letting it sit in a survey response. Put the root cause taxonomy fix on next quarter’s roadmap. The application doesn’t grade a program on being finished. It grades a program on being honest about where it stands, and a documented plan to close a gap says more about a program’s maturity than pretending the gap isn’t there.
Candice Monroe, manager of ethics and compliance at three-time honoree The J.M. Smucker Co., described what that process did for her team: “When you’re going through that application, it helps you focus on your program holistically. It helped us understand where we have clear processes and strategies outlined. But it also helped us focus on opportunity areas and create strategies around those opportunities.”
When we say that the biggest value of applying is the application process, this is what we’re talking about. The very application act itself is a great truth machine for showing where your most immediate program improvements are to be had. And the value of that skyrockets once you complete your application and have a true report card to review.
Split the Final Push, Don’t Carry It Alone
By September, it’s clear which teammates have delivered and which ones have gone quiet. Find out now, not during the last week. If HR was supposed to supply board training records and hasn’t, don’t wait for the deadline to surface the problem. Escalate today to whoever can unstick it.
This is also the moment to revisit who owns what. A corporate secretary who was slow to answer your first email in August may respond faster to a direct ask with a specific date attached now. If someone on the original team has moved on, replace them rather than quietly absorbing their sections yourself. A cross-functional application stays cross-functional all the way to submission.
Finishing Is the Achievement
Craig Pedersen, director of global compliance and ethics program at 20-time honoree PepsiCo, has run his organization through this application for 18 years and still treats the annual push the same way: “We do a deep dive every year into the Ethics Quotient and we always find something that we can work on to improve the program. It’s imperative to take advantage of the tools and the data that’s available afterward.” Eighteen years in, PepsiCo still finishes. That’s the habit worth building, not a one-time sprint toward a badge.
Janet Alves, director of compliance programs at 13-time honoree AES, put the payoff plainly: “Applying for the World’s Most Ethical Companies is a lot of work to go through the process and to fill out the application and coordinate along all of the teams to get that done. But it is definitely one of the awards that makes us most proud in the company and one that leadership looks at each year.” The organizations that push through the September wall instead of letting the application quietly die on someone’s desk are the ones earning that kind of recognition.
Before the Week Is Out
Seven weeks is enough time to finish well. The key is to approach the process with a plan in mind.
- Mark every section done, in progress, or not started, and work the close-to-done sections first
- Assign one owner per open documentation request and ask what they can hand over today, not in three weeks
- Name every gap out loud, and pair each one with a real next step outside the survey field
- Check in with every collaborator by name and escalate anyone who has gone quiet
- Put October 29 at 8 p.m. EDT on the calendar as a hard stop, with a full week of buffer built in before it
The 2027 World’s Most Ethical Companies application closes October 29 at 8 p.m. EDT. You can do this. The application is asking whether your program does what it says it does, not whether your team has more energy in October than it did in July.
Author Bio
Bill Coffin | Editor-in-Chief, Ethisphere Magazine, Ethisphere
Bill Coffin is an internationally recognized writer and editorial leader in the fields of ethics, compliance, insurance and risk management. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune, as well as Compliance Week, National Underwriter, Risk Management, Best’s Review and other B2B media. Previously, Bill served as Director, Senior Editor at AIG, leading content strategy for one of the world’s largest insurance companies.
