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Right now, a team of a handful of people is looking at a half-finished World’s Most Ethical Companies® application and doing some quiet math. Their organization has a fraction of the headcount behind the names on the Honoree list every March. With the deadline a few weeks out, a familiar question creeps in. Is this worth finishing?
It is.
The 2027 application closes October 29 at 8 p.m. EDT, and the assumptions that talk smaller organizations out of crossing the finish line fall apart once you look at how the assessment works and who it has recognized. So let’s look at four myths in particular and deconstruct why none of them should prevent you from finishing your application.
Myth: Onlythe Fortune 500 Makesthe List
Ethisphere designed the Ethics Quotient® questionnaire with organizations above $250 million in revenue in mind. But while that figure describes who the questions were designed around, it is not meant to be a barrier to entry. Ethisphere evaluates every applicant’s score in the context of its size, industry, and structure; , so a 2,000-person company isn’t graded on whether it runs the same training infrastructure as a company with 200,000 employees. It’s graded on whether its program fits its risks and does what it says it does.
The Honoree list reflects that, too. For example, in the 2026 class, 8% of Honorees have fewer than 5,000 employees, and nine report annual revenue under $500 million.
SERTECPET, an Ecuadorian energy services company with roughly 2,400 employees, earned its sixth recognition in 2026 on a list that also includes oil and gas names many times its size. Its program starts with the risk that matters most in its sector. SERTECPET was the first company in Ecuador to earn ISO 37001 certification for its anti-bribery management system, and its leadership has walked away from business opportunities in countries where corruption was prevalent. “At SERTECPET, investing in business ethics is part of our DNA and guides every strategic decision,” said Chairman Eduardo López. That program was built around SERTECPET’s own risks, not borrowed from someone else’s playbook.
Neither organization earned its place on size. Each built a program that matched who it is, then proved it.
Myth: A Bigger Program Scores Better
Size buys more policies, more training modules, more vendors, and more dashboards. It doesn’t automatically buy a program that works, and the application is designed to find out whether yours does.
Ethisphere doesn’t ask applicants to create anything new for the review. The documentation should already exist, and it should be submitted the way employees experience it. That standard exposes the distance between what a program claims and what it does, regardless of its size. A program that has grown faster than its oversight can carry dozens of overlapping policies, training completion rates no one has tested against behavior, and a hotline that collects reports without much visibility into what happens next. Every one of those gaps shows up in the documentation.
A lean program has fewer places for those gaps to hide. When the same small team writes the Code of Conduct, runs the training, and handles the investigations, it can draw a straight line from policy to practice to outcome. The CEO is often a hallway away instead of three reporting layers up. That kind of focus produces a clean, coherent application, and the review is built to see it: Ethisphere’s evaluation team scores the questionnaire and audits the supporting documentation side by side.
The bottom line is that while large organizations run outstanding programs, so do much smaller ones.
Myth: If We Won’t Make the List, Finishing Doesn’t Matter
Every organization that completes the application receives an Ethics Quotient scorecard that benchmarks its program against that year’s Honorees, regardless of company size or whether it earns recognition. For a smaller organization, that scorecard can be one of the most useful documents the compliance function puts in front of leadership all year.
Smaller teams rarely have the budget for outside program assessments, and they’re often asked to justify every dollar they do spend. The scorecard answers the question leadership keeps asking: How does our program compare? If you’re running a program that punches above its weight, the scorecard is how you prove it to your CEO, your Board of Directors, your auditors, and the customers and partners who ask about your ethics and compliance program during due diligence. It turns “we think we’re doing well” into a benchmarked answer: you know where you stand.
Ferrer, a Barcelona-based pharmaceutical company with roughly 1,800 employees, joined the 2026 class as a first-time Honoree. Manel Casas, the company’s chief legal officer, described the value of the comparison itself. “Having a benchmark with other companies and learning about their best practices has allowed us to incorporate new perspectives,” he said. That benefit comes whether or not your name appears on the Honoree list, but only if you submit your application.
Myth: There’s Always Next Week
There isn’t. The portal closes Thursday, October 29, at 8 p.m. EDT. Applicants who make the deadline typically get their decision and scorecard by late January, right as many organizations are setting priorities for the year. Everyone else waits until the portal reopens next summer for the following cycle. That pushes your benchmark data, and the internal case it would have made for you, out by a full year.
If your application has not reached the finish line, use the next three weeks to close it out:
- Mark every section as done, in progress, or not started, and finish the close-to-done sections first
- Assign one owner to each open documentation request and ask what they can hand over this week
- Answer gaps honestly, and pair each one with a real next step for the program
- Set an internal deadline of October 22 so a final review doesn’t collide with the portal closing
Questions along the way can go to the applications team at wmeapplications@ethisphere.com.
The organizations on this list didn’t earn recognition by being the biggest in the room. They earned it by building programs that fit their business and then documenting that work honestly. If that describes your program, the only thing standing between you and the proof is a submit button. Finish your application before October 29 and see how this experience becomes an important step in your program’s maturity journey.
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.
