LRN - Risk management Survey - Ethics Resource Center

key findings6. Detecting ethics and compliance violations presents a significantchallenge for companies.About three-quarters of companies report significant difficulty in detectingethics and compliance violations, both in their home markets (67 percent) andin their international operations (73 percent). The reasons cited include employeesfearing retaliation by the company, feeling unmotivated or failing to understandcompany policies.7. Many companies are confident in their ability to conduct effectiveinvestigations.Conducting investigations received the highest percentage of companies (32 percent)reporting no significant challenges compared to other risk management processes,perhaps because companies have greater experience in investigating than in defining,preventing, and detecting ethics and compliance risks. However, the remainingrespondents cite a range of challenges, including lack of resources and a scarcityof qualified investigators. Companies with operations in multiple regions also citedproblems investigating incidents occurring at international locations.8. Compliance professionals frequently cite a lack of resources (budget andstaff) as their leading risk management challenge.About half of ethics and compliance officials named inadequate resources as theirbiggest challenge in conducting the risk assessment (49 percent) and in implementingprevention programs (53 percent). Lack of adequate resources was also cited as thesecond biggest challenge in investigating allegations.9. Companies attempt to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of their ethicsand compliance programs and use the data to improve their programs.A majority of companies use qualitative (63 percent) or quantitative (52 percent)measures to evaluate the impact of their ethics and compliance process, and47 percent use internal program/process audits. With the data collected, 82 percentof companies attempt to improve their process.10. Despite the prevalence of strong program evaluation efforts, somecompanies find the interpretation, analysis and application of the datacollected challenging.Even with the above qualitative and quantitative evaluations, many companiescite challenges in correlating the data captured to results (38 percent), as well ascorrelating the results to business improvements (33 percent) and aggregatingand analyzing data (29 percent) across programs.LRN | ETHICS AND COMPLIANCE RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES REPORT |