The Business Key

What measures would you use to measure the ROI of your company’s ethics and compliance program? At the ECOA’s “Great Debate,” the debate focused on whether or not the ROI of an ethics and compliance program could be measured. Debater information and their arguments are listed below, followed by a summary of my feelings related to the issues. Steve Priest and Jay Mumford (the debaters) debated the topic of what justifies the existence- and budget, of an ethics and compliance department. Some of the opinions expressed during the debate included that there’s a lack of empirical evidence to support determining the ROI of ethics and compliance, measuring the return through legal fees and fines avoided due to an ethics and compliance program and whether or not ethics and compliance proves that a company is better than another.

Here are my notes from the debate. Please note that each person was assigned a side in the debate, therefore, the people involved were defending the side they were assigned and not necessarily their personal opinions on the matter.

Argument from Steve Priest

Founder of the Ethical Leadership Group, Senior Advisor at Global Compliance.

Argument- Emphasizing ROI for ethics and compliance is problematic for your business.

Ethics program- goal is to help the company be more ethical. Contribute to an organization’s health, leading to improved employee engagement, trust, less EEOC claims and commitment- not necessarily the bottom line on an accounting sheet.
Can’t justify that a company that acts ethically performs better than a company that does business in a conniving way.
No empirical evidence to support the statement that ethics pays.
Despite the evidence, the speaker believes that ethics pays- along with most other businesses.
An ethics and compliance program must be sincere- if a company makes a commitment to ethics and compliance purely because they believe E&C is profitable.
When codes and training are viewed as “check the box” support from the workplace decreases.
Would you gut the E&C department because it can’t provide financial proof that it makes business better?
Ethics means that companies must always do the right thing, even if it is difficult, and costly, making it hard to prove it brings a profit to the business.
Argument from Jay Mumford

Ethics and compliance director at Accenture.

Argument- Ethics and compliance ROI is real in its value, adequate to make the case to senior management to support ethics and compliance.