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Every year, a lot of ethical organizations never make it into the World’s Most Ethical Companies® application at all. Not because their programs would fail. Because someone on the team assumed the list was for organizations several sizes bigger than theirs, with budgets and headcounts to match, and closed the browser tab before ever requesting the questionnaire.
The data says otherwise. Among this year’s 138 Honorees, 8% have fewer than 5,000 employees, and nine report annual revenue under $500 million. The 2026 class also included 19 first-time Honorees, the largest first-time class in the recognition’s history. Ethical leadership isn’t sorted by company size. It’s sorted by whether an organization has done the work, and whether it can prove it.
That hesitation about being ready costs more than it saves. Ethics and compliance programs improve fastest when someone outside the organization examines them, and the application is one of the few ways to get that kind of look without hiring a consultant or waiting for a regulator to ask first. Proving the work is where the value of applying shows up, regardless of how the scorecard comes back.
Every organization that applies receives a detailed Ethics Quotient® scorecard, benchmarked against that year’s Honorees across five categories: Ethics & Compliance, Governance, Culture of Ethics, Environmental & Social Impact, and Third-Party Management. That’s a level of outside scrutiny most compliance teams can’t get any other way, and it doesn’t require winning to be worth having.
‘This Was a Very Educational Process for Us’
Southwire, a privately held wire and cable manufacturer, treated the application itself as a training exercise before ever submitting one. “A year before we submitted our first application, we completed Ethisphere’s Ethics Quotient Survey,” said Spencer Preis, vice president, associate general counsel and deputy chief of ethics and compliance at Southwire. “This was a very educational process for us. It taught us a lot about our areas of strength and improvement opportunities. We then took a risk-based approach to prioritizing resources to build up our program.” Southwire ran the diagnostic, found the gaps, and spent a year closing them before its name ever appeared on an application.
Motiva, a Brazilian fuel infrastructure and mobility company, made this year’s first-time Honoree class. “Beyond the recognition itself, the Ethisphere application process was highly valuable for Motiva, allowing us to critically assess our governance and compliance framework and identify opportunities for further improvement,” said CEO Miguel Setas. He described a cross-functional effort, pulling in compliance, governance, risk, people, and sustainability teams at once, the kind of internal coordination a lot of programs mean to build and never quite get around to until something forces the issue.
FedEx is the clearest evidence that not gaining honors isn’t the end of the story. FedEx didn’t earn World’s Most Ethical Companies recognition on its first application, as Ethisphere has noted publicly. But like every other applicant, the company got a detailed map of how its program fared, and where it fell short. FedEx used that feedback to close the gaps over the cycles that followed, and it’s now a four-time Honoree managing compliance across more than 500,000 employees in 220 countries and territories. The scorecard from a year without recognition became the roadmap for the successful years that followed.
A Diagnostic and a Benchmark
That pattern shows up in almost every conversation Ethisphere has with applicants, honored or not. “Even if you don’t achieve the honor,” says Deborah Spanic, chief ethics and compliance officer at Clarios, “going through that benchmarking and seeing where your program stacks up against those that are considered to be at the top of their game is a fantastic way to gauge the things that you need to focus on.” The application isn’t a pass-fail test. It’s a diagnostic that doubles as a benchmark against the best programs in the world, and a company gets that diagnostic whether or not its name ends up on the list.
That’s also why the first application is rarely the last one. A company that applies once has already built the muscle: a cross-functional team that knows how to document the program, a scorecard showing where to spend the next budget cycle, and a concrete answer to a question most compliance leaders can’t otherwise get answered, how their program stacks up against the best in the field. Once a team has that answer, walking away from it for good is the harder choice.
The 2027 application portal opened July 29 and closes October 29, 2026, at 8 p.m. EDT. Requesting the application costs nothing but a few minutes, and it comes with the full Ethics Quotient questionnaire to look over before anyone commits a team to it.
Eligibility isn’t a strict revenue cutoff, either. The questionnaire is built with organizations above $250 million in revenue in mind, but Ethisphere evaluates every applicant’s score in the context of its size, industry, and structure. Smaller organizations and private companies that can show the kind of program maturity described above are welcome to apply and be recognized alongside much larger peers.
You’re More Ready Than You Think
If your organization has never applied because it seemed premature, that hesitation is worth a second look. The data, the scorecard, and companies like Southwire, Motiva, and FedEx all point to the same conclusion. The application is the fastest way to find out where your program stands, and it’s never too early to find that out.
Apply now. You’re more ready than you think.
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.
