Avoid undermining your compliance program

(Aarti Maharaj, who contributed this post, is executive editor and director of digital content at Ethisphere Institute.)

It’s clear that regulatory oversight has never been more complex than now. At the same time, public scrutiny of corporate culture, business behavior and overall transparency has increased markedly. 

In an effort to redefine the profession and promote the best practices of integrity and business behavior around the globe, the Ethisphere Institute’s Eighth Annual Global Ethics Summit, to be held March 9-10,in New York City, will focus on transparency and ethics.

The event will provide corporate executives and compliance practitioners with a distinctive opportunity to listen, learn and connect with C-suite leaders across industries and geographical regions with one goal in mind: advancing corporate integrity.

‘The thing that’s unique about the Global Ethics Summit is you get a mix of the nuts and bolts [ideas] from the panels,’ says James Williams, vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of Liquidity Services, which operates an online auction marketplace for wholesale, surplus, and salvage assets. ‘You also get the big picture from CEOs, private equity leaders and business leaders telling us what they need from our legal departments. So I can take all of that, synthesize it and say, 'here’s the big picture and here is how it translates into what I need to do on a daily basis,’ and I think that is unique amongst the conferences.’

This year, about 74 percent of attendees registered represent companies that have more than 10,000 employees, with 56 percent comprising C-level executives and directors. 

Key speakers include:

• Alex Dimitrief, general counsel and senior vice president, General Electric
• Melissa Stapleton Barnes, chief ethics and compliance officer, senior vice president, enterprise risk management, Eli Lilly and Company
• Samuel A. Di Piazza Jr., board member at JLL and AT&T
• David Howard, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, Microsoft Corporation
• Networking lunch featuring Brad Katsuyama, president and CEO, IEX Group (focus of Michael Lewis’ book ‘Flash Boys’)

While the faculty at Ethisphere’s Global Ethics Summit is always impressive, this year is the best I’ve seen,’ says Erica Salmon Byrne, executive director of the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA), a membership community of companies that share leading practices across a global network, and an initiative of Ethisphere. ‘The attendees are some of the most senior compliance and ethics professionals in the industry, so the quality of the dialogue is sure to be tremendous.’

Moreover, as Ethisphere celebrates its tenth anniversary promoting best practices in business ethics, attendees will have the chance to share information about their own programs and join the conversations that will be led by reputable multinational corporations regarding hotly debated topics such as:

• Ethical advantage and performance
• Global strategy and brand stewardship
• Gender diversity
• Cross-border investigations and government cooperation
• Investors: looking beyond profit and toward CSR
• Cyber attacks, compliance and reputation
• Company culture
• Pay-gap: company responsibility

At this year’s Global Ethics Summit, attendees can expect to meet executives and ethics and compliance leaders from a variety of industries, including aerospace, health care, finance, engineering, technology, and manufacturing, as well as from the US government and regulatory agencies.

For more information and to register click here.

Follow the Global Ethics Summit Official Twitter handle.