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Not every organization that applies for Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition gets named an Honoree. If you’re wondering if it’s still worth applying even if your organization doesn’t earn recognition, consider the reason so many applicants value the application process itself.
Every Applicant Gets a Scorecard
Every organization that applies, Honoree or not, gets a scorecard back from the Ethics Quotient® (EQ), the assessment behind the recognition. It breaks down performance across five categories: Culture of Ethics, Corporate Governance, Ethics & Compliance, Third-Party Management, and Environmental & Social Impact. Alongside it comes benchmarking data across 20 individual data points, measured against the full pool of that year’s applicants. Building that picture means documenting policies, training programs, governance structures, and sustainability practices in enough detail for Ethisphere’s team to score them. That’s the kind of outside, structured read on compliance program effectiveness most ethics and compliance teams want. Few get the mandate, or the outside eyes, to do it well on their own.
Paul Cash, general counsel at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, has applied through several cycles. “Even if you are not honored, applying is such a rewarding process,” he said. “It will help to make your program better, which will allow you to make a bigger impact on your communities and the world.” He describes the application itself as a mirror: “It gives you an opportunity to reflect on your program, celebrate its strengths, and shine a light on potential improvement opportunities.”
Deborah Spanic, chief ethics and compliance officer at Clarios, said the benchmarking is the reason her company keeps applying at all. “We always have valued the benchmarking that the World’s Most Ethical Companies process provides,” she said. “To me, that’s one of the greatest benefits we get from it.”
The Diagnostic Doesn’t Stop at Recognition
Winning doesn’t end the exercise either. Patricia Thompson at Pacific Life put it this way: “The real value of the recognition is the journey that we go through on an annual basis, where we take previous benchmark information, compare ourselves to it, and ask ourselves, what do we want to do differently.”
Grupo Bimbo has applied every year since 2015. Ignacio Stepanenko, the company’s global compliance leader, calls Ethisphere’s benchmark “a lighthouse,” something the company keeps checking its position against, year after year. Joe Santosusso, chief compliance officer at WD (formerly Western Digital), made a similar point from a different angle: “These awards are not objectives. These are outputs of the hard work that we do. Benchmarking is the greatest tool that anybody in compliance has, because no program is ever finished.”
It Tends to Pull the Rest of the Company In
Alistair Raymond, chief compliance officer at Avangrid, said benchmarking against the World’s Most Ethical Companies pool changed how his team set priorities. “Their feedback prompted a new initiative to collaborate with other departments in terms of root cause analysis,” he said. Erin Lewin, general counsel at Avnet, frames the same effect as a stakeholder-management tool: “External validation not only informs your future deployment of resources, it also can provide important stakeholders with confidence that your focus is in the right place.”
For first-time applicants, the application itself can double as due diligence on the company. Terry Stringer, who leads ethics, integrity policy, and operations at HP, remembers what the first cycle required: “That first year I performed due diligence, completed the application, and I also did a lot of research on the company based on all the things that Ethisphere asks about.”
The Benchmark Holds Up
None of this carries much weight if the underlying benchmark is soft, and the numbers say it isn’t. The 2026 class included 138 Honorees across 40 industries in 17 countries, with 19 first-time Honorees (the largest inaugural class in the program’s history) and six companies marking their 20th consecutive year on the list. Ethisphere’s Ethics Premium™ analysis found that Honorees outperformed a broad global stock benchmark by 8.2 percentage points over the five years from 2021 through 2025. They also held up better in downturns: a 7.1% smaller maximum drawdown, a 10.1% faster recovery to prior highs, and 14.4% less time spent below previous peak values.
That’s the group applicants are measured against, whether or not their name ends up on the final list.
How to Apply for the 2027 Cycle
The 2027 application portal opened to approved applicants on July 29, 2026. Submissions close October 29, 2026, at 8 p.m. EDT, with expert review and benchmarking running through January 2027. Every applicant gets a decision and a scorecard back by late January, two months before the public Honoree announcement in March. The program is generally built for organizations with more than $250 million in revenue, though a readiness guide included with the application request clarifies fit quickly.
Organizations considering the 2027 cycle can request access at Ethisphere’s how-to-apply page (worldsmostethicalcompanies.com/how-to-apply). Whatever the decision letter says in January, the scorecard is usually reason enough to apply again next year.
Author Bio
Bill Coffin | Editor-in-Chief, Ethisphere Magazine, Ethisphere
Bill Coffin is the Editor-in-Chief of Ethisphere Magazine and supports the larger content strategy of Ethisphere. He 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.
