Meet Ronald Berenbeim - Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics

Meet Ronald Berenbeim ...continued from page 19
Sentencing Guidelines is that the job is to
promote an ethical culture throughout the
company. Business ethics programs have now
reached a defining moment similar to that
of the Total Quality initiatives of the early-
and mid-1990s. Following that model, will
functional operations such as sales, marketing,
and Human Resources eventually have their
own ethics programs Arguably, much of this
has already occurred in Finance. It seems
inevitable that it will happen in this way, and
if and when it does, we may be able to subject
ethics programs to more traditional metrics
for program success, such as return on investment,
productivity, etc.
JT: How has the ethics and compliance
profession itself changed over time
RB: First we need to define what is meant
by the ethics and compliance profession. Of
course there are practitioners–company ethics
and compliance officers and the consultants
that advise them and their companies.
Academics and even journalists who have
focused on business ethics issues are also
part of what I would call the “profession.”
There are the various institutes and associations
everywhere in the world devoted to the
dissemination and exchange of information
on business ethics. And finally, there are the
global organizations like the United Nations,
OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development], World Bank,
and non-governmental organizations such as
Transparency International that have made
significant contributions to addressing business
ethics problems. I have had an opportunity
to work with all of these people, and
perhaps the most important change I have
seen in the last 20 years is that each of these
professional categories now knows about the
others and has an active interest in what they
are doing. In addition, there are now people
like myself who move freely throughout what
I would call the global business ethics community.
To give you just one example of how this
fellowship of interest works, several months
ago, Lori Tansey Martens, President of the
International Business Ethics Institute, sent an
e-mail to her friends and colleagues (not exactly
a small number of people) asking for comments
on the question “Has compliance killed
business ethics” The number of responses and
the variety of sources from which they came
was frankly quite surprising, even to me.
By the way, I do not believe that compliance
has killed business ethics and that was, I
think, a minority view. A surprising number
of corporate practitioners said that it had.
They remembered, as I did, the early days
when they and others were shaping and defining
this new field. In this regard, it is worth
noting that perhaps the most important thing
about ethics is that it consists in large measure
of arguments without end, and as long as you
have the level of concern and emotion about
ethics that Lori’s invitation generated, it is
hard to see how compliance has “killed” it.
JT: Is there value for a chief compliance
officer (CCO) to benchmark or otherwise
compare his or her program to other organizations
Are there benchmarks you recommend
RB: I don’t favor benchmarking for ethics
programs. Ethics programs should emanate
from a company’s history, long-standing policies
that have stood the test of time, and its
on-going internal discussions of what kind of
company it wants to be. Once someone from
a household-name company came up to me
at a Conference Board Ethics Conference and
said “our board used your last study to benchmark
our ethics program.” Who wouldn’t
feel flattered by such a remark But I was also
uncomfortable. As he continued, I realized
why. “The board,” he said, “was concerned
that, unlike a majority of the programs in
your survey, ours was not established by a
board resolution.” Of course, it wasn’t. The
company had one of the oldest and most
admired ethics programs in the United States.
It was established by top management, as were
most of the early initiatives, at a time when
boards did not greatly concern themselves
with such matters. By all means, read the
benchmarking studies, but focus on what the
participants have to say about what works
and what doesn’t, not what percentage of the
respondents do this or that.
JT: From your research, what have you
observed on how government actually applies
the criteria for an “effective compliance program”
from the Sentencing Guidelines, the
DOJ memos, or the SEC Seabord Report in
deciding whether to charge or give credit to a
company that’s been prosecuted
RB: I have observed very little, and it is
for that reason that The Conference Board
is launching its research group on Ethics
& Compliance Criteria in Government
Enforcement Decisions.
We are going to engage governmental
enforcement authorities (federal, state, regulatory)
in a dialogue with the Research Working
Group member companies regarding the use
of ethics and compliance criteria in enforcement
decisions. In addition, we will assemble
a database of cases, memoranda, and other
pertinent documents. Our first meeting will
be April 4-5 this year in Washington, DC. As
of this writing, nine companies have joined
and others have expressed serious interest. The
group will operate for 12-15 months and will
hold two additional live and three Webcast
meetings, and companies are welcome to join
us at any stage to help frame and direct the
research.
We are going to look at U.S. sentencing,
charging, and federal agency enforcement
decisions and engage in a similar process with
respect to state efforts. We will also look at
civil litigation and voluntary enforcement
Continued on page 23
April 2007
20
Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics • (888) 277-4977 • www.corporatecompliance.org