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Ethicast: FirstEnergy Powers Up Its E&C Program

Ethicast

FirstEnergy Powers Up Its E&C Program

Every E&C program that survives a build-out reaches the same inflection point: the structure is in place, and the harder question is whether it’s working. Deandra Williams-Lewis, Vice President and Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer at FirstEnergy, joins Ethisphere Editor-in-Chief Bill Coffin to discuss what comes after a five-year maturity journey that earned FirstEnergy its second consecutive Compliance Leader Verification™ designation. She explains why she judges the program by the behavior it changes rather than the activity it produces, how explaining the why moves compliance past its reputation as the “department of no,” and why losing good talent to other business units can make the program stronger. 

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BELA Asks…All About Conflicts of Interest

Ethicast

BELA Asks…All About Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest have dominated the BELA concierge queue in recent months, and three member questions show where conflicts programs get stuck.

In this BELA Asks episode, Erica Salmon Byrne, Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chair of Ethisphere, joins Ethisphere hosts Bill Coffin, Editor-in-Chief, and Julia Boyes, Manager of Community Events & Global Sponsor Engagement, to answer them: when to use disclosure versus pre-clearance, how to assess employees who accept highly compensated board seats, and what must be in place before conflicts approval moves from compliance to business leaders. Her answer holds across all three. Design for the conflicts you are trying to catch, and build a process employees will use.

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Ethicast: How to Close the Proxy Season Disclosure Gap

Ethicast

How to Close the Proxy Season Disclosure Gap

Nearly every organization calls ethics foundational, but far fewer can show their board or investors the evidence. In this episode, Vera Cherepanova, Executive Director of Boards of the Future, joins Ethisphere’s Bill Coffin, Editor-in-Chief, to walk through her organization’s 2026 Proxy Season Review, which analyzed 4,766 SEC filings, including those of 2026 World’s Most Ethical Companies® Honorees. They discuss why so few companies outside financial services state a risk appetite, why the real AI governance test is who can say no, how to split E&C oversight across board committees, why substantiated whistleblower cases are the evidence boards should see, and why a looser disclosure regime makes specific, voluntary disclosure more valuable. 

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Ethics & Compliance by the Numbers: 2027 Planning Edition

Free E-bookData and Benchmarking · PDF

Ethics & Compliance by the Numbers: 2027 Planning Edition

140+ ethics and compliance statistics and benchmarks, every source named. Build your 2027 plan, defend your budget, and brief your board.

The compliance data your 2027 plan is missing

E&C teams have less time than ever for research, and more need for the numbers that win budget. So we did the research.

140+ stats across nine categories, drawn from named primary sources and Ethisphere’s own data: the 2026 Ethics Premium™, the 2026 World’s Most Ethical Companies® benchmark, and the AI Adoption in E&C survey. Built for end-of-year presentations and the 2027 investment case.

How CECOs use this e-book

  1. Lead with value, not fear. Open with the Ethics Premium and intangible value. Save enforcement for the consequence.
  2. Benchmark, don’t guess. Honoree data shows what leading programs staff, fund, and measure.
  3. Pull the three stats your board argues about. Every one is presentation-ready and sourced.
  4. Watch the four shifts of 2026. FCPA restarted, whistleblower money moved, ESG reversed, AI regulation arrived.

Free download

Get the full e-book

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Data that makes the case

Lead with what integrity returns. Close with what a failure costs.

Value first, consequence second — the sequence boards actually argue in.

+8.2 pts
Honoree outperformance versus a global benchmark, 2021–2025
2026 Ethics Premium
92%
of S&P 500 market value is intangible — the balance sheet your program protects
Ocean Tomo 2025
$171.2M
average sanctions in one FCPA matter, plus 39 months of investigation
Stanford FCPA Clearinghouse
84%
of E&C teams use AI with no AI budget. Only 11% could explain their use to a regulator
AI Adoption in E&C

Inside the e-book

Nine categories of ethics and compliance benchmarks for 2027

Independent research paired with proprietary Honoree benchmarks: what the field faces, and what the best do differently.

The Ethics Premium

What integrity is worth in share price: outperformance, drawdown, and recovery speed versus a global benchmark.

2026 Ethics Premium

Intangible Value

Why most enterprise value now sits in reputation and trust, and what AI does to that mix.

Ocean Tomo 2025Brand Finance GIFT 2025

The Cost of Non-Compliance

FCPA rebooted, the rising global enforcement floor, and 10 named 2026 resolutions to cite.

DOJStanford FCPA ClearinghouseUK SFO

Artificial Intelligence

Adoption, workflows, the governance gap, and how Honorees govern AI versus everything else.

AI Adoption in E&C2026 WMEC Benchmark

Compliance Challenges

What 725 CECOs rank hardest, and the regulatory whiplash since 2025.

2026 KPMG Global CECO Survey

Whistleblowers & Speak-Up Culture

Record False Claims Act filings, AI on both ends of the hotline, and how Honorees build speak-up infrastructure.

DOJ FY2025 FCA statistics2026 WMEC Benchmark

Program Investment

What leading programs budget, staff, and assess: the reference class for “adequately resourced.”

2026 WMEC BenchmarkDOJ White-Collar Enforcement Plan

Board Engagement

How often boards hear from E&C, what they are told, and the incentive-risk gap.

2026 WMEC BenchmarkAI Adoption in E&C

Third Parties

Third-party involvement in breaches tripled in two years. What Honorees screen for and how they stay in touch.

Verizon DBIR2026 WMEC Benchmark

Who it’s for

Built for CECOs at large, global companies

The benchmarks come from Fortune 500-scale programs: 138 Honorees across 40 industries and 17 countries, and 134 E&C leaders, mostly at $1B+ companies. These are your peers.

Go beyond the e-book

Get a custom benchmark report for your program — free.

Get your custom benchmark
Budget and headcount season
58% of Honorees budget $5M+ for E&C; 61% run teams of 21+. Size your ask against that reference class.
Your next board update
78% of Honorees brief the board quarterly. Only 25% cover how incentives shape conduct.
AI governance questions from the audit committee
Two proprietary data sets show where the field stands on AI, and how far even the best have to go.

Your 2027 plan deserves better than last year’s numbers.

Talk to us about where your program stands and what 2027 should look like.

Book a call
Get a free benchmarking report

Ethicast: Christian Hunt on How to Humanize Compliance 

Ethicast

Christian Hunt on How to Humanize Compliance

Ethics and compliance programs exist to change how people behave, but the work of building them can crowd out that purpose. In this Ethicast episode, Bill Coffin, Editor-in-Chief at Ethisphere, talks with Christian Hunt, founder of Human Risk and author of Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioral Science to Ethics and Compliance about designing programs around how people are likely to behave rather than how we would like them to. Hunt explains why enforcement doesn’t have to be total to work, why programs should assume goodwill in the majority and reserve monitoring for the margins, how making compliance easy also strengthens the case for enforcement, and why employees who feel distrusted stop asking questions and reporting problems.

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Ethicast: Why Managers Are the Missing Link in Ethical Culture and Compliance

Ethicast

Why Managers Are the Missing Link in Ethical Culture and Compliance

Policies, training, and a hotline can make a program look complete on paper, but employees judge it by what they hear from their managers. In this Ethicast episode, Evie Wentink, Founder of Ethical Edge Experts, joins Ethisphere Editor-in-Chief Bill Coffin to explain why most organizations still leave managers out of program design and what it takes to change that. She covers creating a dedicated program for managers, opening every team meeting with a short integrity moment, designing communications with employees across every level so messages reach remote and non-desk workers, and keeping a compliance team growing when the budget does not.

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