An Assessment Tool for Measuring Ethical Fitness.

• Author: Dubinsky, Joan Elise
• Position: Ethics Corner

It was once said that measuring a corporation's commitment to ethics was like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Conversations about ethics and integrity were met with disdain. Business ethics was described as an oxymoron. Measuring a commitment to ethics was a definitional impossibility.

Today, the marketplace and the workplace have come of age. One just does not hear business ethics dismissed with a feeble joke. Those who are tasked with upholding a corporation's commitment to ethics and integrity ask probing questions and assume substantial portfolios. They anticipate their board's directive to ensure that their organization is doing all that it can. And with that maturation come the eternal questions of measurement, benchmarking, goal setting and assessment.

From the C suite through all layers of management, interest in doing business with integrity is growing along with interest in measuring that commitment. Committed leaders want to know that their investment of time, energy and resources in ethical conduct matters to their stakeholders. They want to know how their organization has progressed. They want to know what else needs to be done. In other words, they want to measure their organization's ethical fitness.

Most major corporations conduct their business in multiple countries, across conflicting legal and regulatory authorities, and by engaging with multiple constituencies.

Identifying just the right legal authority can be difficult--and at times impossible. Though business thrives on definitive answers, the marketplace delivers complexity.

Though the legal assumptions about ethics and compliance are relatively similar across national boundaries, the specifics are not always reconcilable.

To model an ethics and compliance program only on the legal requirements of one nation can be shortsighted. And where standards are not clear, regulations poorly drafted, or laws incomplete, the challenge of creating a robust ethics and compliance program is nearly impossible.

Businesses are already global in outlook and becoming more global in operations. These changes create new challenges. What is needed is a common methodology to measure progress over time in connection with a fundamental commitment to ethics and integrity. That common methodology should be global in application, distinct from any one nation's laws or regulations, and able to transcend the particular by embracing the universal.

Ethics and compliance programs have matured over the...